As she fitted a second piece of tape over the back, she looked up at Julio. “If it comes down to it, pull up the tape and bleed on the thing. There’s power in blood. And yours has a hell of a kick. But until then…” She flipped the device over and activated the screen. A map appeared, zoomed out to show the entire country. A silver dot pulsed in Georgia. “There’s the gun.”
His eyes fixed on that point. It didn’t matter that finding the gun didn’t necessarily mean finding Sera. It was hope, a concrete direction in which to travel, and Julio snatched the tablet.
“Whatever you want,” he promised hoarsely. “I’m good for the money.”
“For Ben,” she said again, already packing up her supplies. “But if you want to send me a grand to cover the supplies, I won’t spit on you. Patrick knows how to find me. You’ve got more important shit to get done.”
He looked up, met Patrick’s gaze. “This time, it is my call to make. I’m going to kill that fucker.”
Chapter Seventeen
She heard his voice in her dreams.
Slow. Familiar. Coaxing and wheedling, whispering for her to open her eyes, whining for her to wake up. Her head throbbed and her body felt bruised from nose to toes, but it was his voice that dragged her into consciousness, and the sick dread that came with it.
Paper touched her lips. “Wake up and drink it. You got a little banged up in the crash.”
Josh.
She pressed her lips together as tightly as she could and turned her face, not caring that something wet splashed against her cheek.
He sighed, exasperated and impatient. His fingers curled tight in her hair, and he forcibly pulled her face back to the cup. “Drink.”
It smelled like water. Shuddering, she parted her lips, and she was so parched she let the liquid wash over her tongue and only considered spitting it back at him for a few moments. It might be satisfying, but it wouldn’t be smart.
Right now, she needed to be smart.
“Touching.” Another voice, this one low and irritated. “When you’re finished, can we talk about how you fucked everything up?”
Sera tried to turn her head, but Josh’s grip in her hair hadn’t eased. She only caught a glimpse of the room’s other occupant out of the corner of her eye, but it was enough. He looked like an older, angrier version of Miguel, which meant he had to be Diego Mendoza.
Okay, she had to be really smart.
Wesley Dade’s dire prediction about dominoes and the end of the world echoed in her head as Josh turned to glare at Diego. “I wasn’t going to miss this chance. The bastard’s been on top of her day and night.”
“Which is the point, genius. You take him out, you get her, and we both have what we need.
As it stands, I provided you with some powerful, expensive magic, and for what? To watch you make kissy faces at a woman who obviously despises you? This isn’t even entertaining.”
Josh’s coyote surged to the surface, its rage a hot wind of power. He released her and rose, placing his body between her and Diego with a twisted sort of protectiveness. “She belongs with me. Your son’s confused her, because he doesn’t know how to take care of her. He doesn’t deserve to touch her.”
Sera’s stomach roiled at the fervent tone of the words. Not the same as the angry man who’d confronted her in New Orleans. The sick pulse of his coyote was proof enough.
Whatever grip on sanity Josh had possessed was gone.
Diego snorted. “I don’t give a shit what you and your little princess get up to, but you owe me. You didn’t hold up your end of this deal.”
“Deal’s not done yet.” Josh lowered his voice. “Give me time to talk to her. She’ll come around and then we can take care of the rest.”
Diego snatched a bottle of whiskey up from the table and tossed it into the small kitchen sink with a crash. “Too much of that, not enough thinking. You’re not the only shapeshifter stupid over the girl. Do you think my son’s going to wait for her to turn up? He’s coming after you, idiot.”
Josh stared at the wolf, and for one hysterical moment, Sera wanted to laugh. Josh was an idiot. A drunk, stupid fool, and wouldn’t it have been nice if Diego had turned out to be one too?
The two of them could have bickered over tactics like a sketch-comedy parody until Julio showed up to kill them both.
What a weak, pathetic hope. Just like a good submissive shifter. Cringe and whimper and wait to be rescued.
Fuck that.
Her body ached, but Josh hadn’t bothered to tie her up. Why would he have? She’d never had the ability to disobey him for long, not once he brought dominant power to bear. She could feel the weight of the enchanted gun holster at her hip, but Diego was staring right at her.
Not the right time. She wet her lips and remembered Josh’s sneering insult from a thousand years ago. Is that how you deal with life these days? Something bugs you, you throw a goddamn wolf at it? She had a lot of wolves to throw. None of them would send Josh running, but Diego…
Oh, she could scare him.
“Julio’s not the only one who’s going to come looking for me,” she said, looking straight back into Diego’s dark eyes. “Alec Jacobson’s in town, and he’s been friends with my dad since before I was born. You don’t want to be here when he shows up. And if you paid for magic to fool Anna Lenoir, you really don’t want her knocking on the door. She won’t bother to kill you before she starts cutting you into pieces.”
Diego pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and he barely glanced at her as he lit one.
“Muzzle your bitch, Hill. She’s about to start in on the head games.”
Josh had called her a bitch during a hundred arguments, but apparently that privilege was reserved for him alone. A snarl vibrated in his chest as he pulled back his shoulders. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
“No, you watch yours,” Diego growled. “I’m not about to let her flap her lips and throw you off your already pathetic game. So shut her up, or I will.”
Tension filled the room, a challenge issued. Sera held her breath…and almost let it out on a whimper when Josh turned away, submitting to Diego’s dominant power. “Hush, sweetheart,” he whispered to her, leaning down to stroke her cheek. The touch made her skin crawl, but not half so much as the rush of magic that followed. He might have submitted to Diego, but he was still dominant to her.
And her coyote knew it. The animal inside curled in on itself, a defensive gesture that left her feeling small and helpless. The crush of Josh’s aura against hers made it hard to choke out even one word, let alone a whole sentence. “You’re going to let him hurt me?”
“He doesn’t want to hurt you,” Josh soothed, stroking her again. “He didn’t want you having babies with his son, but that’s natural. After I left New Orleans, I knew those wolves had to be twisting you up. They’re not right, not any of them. We stick to our own kind. We belong with our own kind. Diego knows that. I know that. You know it, even if they made you forget. You know how good it can be.”
Getting the shit beat out of her would be less traumatic than this. She twisted away, wiggling back toward the wall. “Then Diego’s lying to you. He didn’t stick with his own kind.”
The wolf leaned against the wall and eyed her. “Didn’t I?”
“Carmen’s in her thirties and Miguel’s barely past twenty. That wasn’t a one-night stand.”
“Humans are more of a blank slate.” One of his eyebrows ticked up in a tiny arch. “If they weren’t, Julio couldn’t have been born a wolf. You certainly couldn’t give birth to one.”