“So, tell me, Doc, I believe you had info for me about the girl.”
“Hmm,” the doctor mumbled as she looked up from her microscope and scribbled on a piece of paper. “The vial from the blood dealer. It was the blood of an adolescent female. And she was a crossbreed. Guardian and Sanguen. I cross-referenced it to the girl you found in the park. It was a match. But there is something I do not understand.” The doc stood and turned, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully behind her glasses. “Why adolescent females?”
Gabe started at that information but Kel didn’t seem surprised. “It is forbidden to blood children.” He was appalled. It was one of their most sacred tenets. “Blooding children carries an immediate penalty of death.”
Kel’s smile was bitter. “Only if you get caught. And this dude is being very careful to avoid that.”
“But why children?” Gabe muttered darkly. He disliked the bitterness in Kel. She must have seen it too often. He wanted to believe that over the alternative. “There is no nutritional value in prepubescent females.”
Kel plucked a pipette from a jar and studied it. She seemed to need to be in constant motion. “Because he’s a freaking sicko. Do they need a specific reason? Besides I think the girls he took were in the beginnings of the change.”
The redheaded doctor plucked the tool from her hand and replaced it. “That may indicate that they were beginning to produce the extra protein in their blood required for nutrition. While you were at the blood spa, I was analyzing your boyfriend’s blood.”
Kel made a face but remained silent.
“I didn’t find any trace of Guardian blood.”
Gabe cast a glance at Kel to gauge her reaction. She’d grown still, poised, with a frown creasing her lips. He was unsure of the exact biological process involved with blooding. He knew his blood absorbed the blood he ingested. Sanguen were forbidden to blood any other species, especially human because of the effect it had on them. Not only did human blood lack what they needed but it contained a hormone that affected their central nervous system.
“What did you find? I think you know better than most that I’m half Guardian.”
“Indeed. I found crossbreed blood. Sanguen and Guardian to be exact.”
Kel relaxed her body but Gabe frowned. He was sure there was something the doctor wasn’t telling them.
“Well, yeah, my blood would be crossbreed blood and he definitely took enough of it for it to show up.” Kel scoffed.
Dr. Mahoney’s smile had that clinical quality that put Gabe on edge. “No, Agent, I don’t believe you quite understand. I found crossbreed blood. Your boyfriend’s blood tested as that of a crossbreed.”
Kel jerked upright. “What!”
Gabe processed that. It definitely explained his new strengths. The enhanced hearing and sight. The sense of vitality that infused him, a hyperawareness that affected his every perception. He could even slide in and out of Kel’s mind with greater ease, although the new strength of their bond might be mostly to blame for that.
Dr. Mahoney was appraising him, and he almost felt as though he were smeared on a slide beneath her microscope. In a way, he guessed he had been.
“You are probably experiencing heightened sensory perception. You may even experience an increase in strength and agility.” Her pale blue eyes lit with an eerie inner fire. “Perhaps even accelerated healing. You may even see a diminished sensitivity to solar radiation. And who knows what affect it may have on your existing strengths. This is uncharted territory.”
“Wait!” Kel paced a half circle around him, her dark gaze sliding up and down him. “You mean he’s becoming a crossbreed?”
“Hematologically, yes. To determine the extent of the change I would need to go beyond blood. I would need to conduct more invasive testing. If I only had a sample of his blood before the exchange for a comparative study.”
Gabe frowned. “Do you have a theory why?”
The doctor blinked her eyes back into focus. “When Sanguen males ingest blood a special gastric acid separates the different cells. Special proteins get absorbed directly into the bloodstream and bond to the red blood cells. What’s left gets absorbed by the white blood cells and disposed of. Crossbreed blood that includes Sanguen blood must somehow make a permanent bond. I would need to recheck his blood intermittently to determine the long-term effect.”
Something didn’t seem right. If the killer was after the benefits of crossbreed Guardian blood why would he use adolescent blood? Surely he wouldn’t get the same effect if he used blood from a fully grown crossbreed female.
Kel’s eyes lingered speculatively on him, and he would have given one of his blades to know what she was thinking. “It explains the high temp I got off of you. But” – she turned her dark eyes back on the doctor – “that still leaves us with the question of why our perv chooses children when the goods are obviously in the adult females.”
“Perhaps he isn’t aware of the enhanced response he would receive from an adult. If the victim was an adolescent crossbreed, especially one going through the change, there may still be a minor effect,” Dr. Mahoney theorized. “I think I may go down to the morgue and analyze our young victim myself. I will know more in a day or two.”
“Good. We need to check in with our fearless leader and then I’m off to grab some grub and catch a couple hours shut-eye. Tomorrow, I think we should go after our friend Jimmy. His scent was on the girl, and I’ll bet anything he’s up to his beady little eyes in this.”
Gabe nodded. “I need to retrieve some items from my hotel.” He motioned to the shirt he wore that was stained with her blood. He’d used it to stanch the bleeding and it was all he’d had to pull on at her apartment earlier. Following her out of the lab he waited until they were out of earshot of the interfering doctor. He knew what he said next would not be received well. Despite her protests otherwise, he could not leave her vulnerable to attack again.
“I will be staying with you tonight at your apartment to be certain you are safe.”
Kel spun on her heel to stop the overgrown babysitter with one hand to his chest. “What do you mean you’ll be staying with me? Didn’t we already have this discussion about me being a big girl?”
There was no way she could get through an entire night with his tantalizing scent wafting through her apartment. The mere thought of lying in her bed with that heat and spice smell in her nose made her tighten and throb. No, absolutely not.
How much could one woman take in a single night?
A small smile played on those full lips, and once again she remembered the contrasting feel of his soft beard and softer mouth moving with unbearable hunger over her own lips and down her neck. The heat was like a flash fire, leaving her smoldering before she could even make an effort to put it out.
Get a grip, woman.
“Someone was trying to kill you.”
“No,” Kel corrected, ramming her index finger into his chest. “Someone was trying to kill
you
. Someone was just trying to incapacitate me. Quite unsuccessfully, I might add.”
Kel turned and started down the hall toward Kye’s office, leaving him to follow or not as he so chose. The gall of this man. She’d been taking care of herself for years now and she’d managed to stay alive thus far. That first hellish year on her own had taught her a lot about how strong she was.
Living in a Triumvirate home had been a learning experience. She’d been so naive and unprepared for what was coming that the memory of it almost hurt. Rubbing the burning that started in her chest she frowned when it began to ease and a sense of comfort began to infuse her.
She jerked to a stop and spun around, nearly colliding with Gabe. He was worming around inside her again. It was like invasion of the body snatchers. “Knock that off. Stay out of my brain. Play around in your own. Stretch out a bit. There’s probably a lot of unused space.”
She spun on her heel and started walking down the hall, feeling the faint impression of his humor in her mind. Ass! The man was driving her crazy. It was bad enough she was stuck with him but did he have to be so overbearing as well?
They barely knew anything about each other and yet they had been irreversibly bound together. Until death do us part bound. It was nothing more than blood, and yet it gave him free rein to go strolling through her emotions whenever he wanted to. Just because he was bound to her by blood didn’t mean he had any right to her emotions. It didn’t mean he loved her.
Kel cast a glance over her shoulder as her heart thudded into her throat. For one brief moment she wondered what it would be like if he did love her. What would it be like to have the unconditional love and acceptance of this one sexy, protective Sanguen? Would he smother her? Would she lose what she’d worked so hard to create in herself? Could she trust him to not make her dependent on him and then leave her?
It didn’t matter because he didn’t love her. She was his meal ticket and nothing more. Not that it was a major hardship on her side. His blooding of her had definitely not been the horrible experience she’d initially expected it to be. The feel of his warm lips brushing the skin of her neck and the rough heat of his tongue had been over the top. Then once his canines had slid smoothly into her and he began to suck she had exploded. Or imploded. Who could tell? Who in the hell cared? It was just incredible and had her wondering when he would need to drink again. She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was bordering on obsession about it by asking him.
The tingling in her gums began again, and she ran her tongue over her lengthening canines experimentally. Before meeting Gabe she never knew she had fangs, or functioning ones, at least. Now all she had to do was think of him and they extended. His flesh would be warm and salty against her mouth, the beat of his heart pulsing strongly beneath her tongue. What would it feel like to let the thick essence of him slide down her throat, to pull him deep into her body?
Kel nearly groaned as that throb between her legs intensified. Anytime she thought of blooding him she always imagined his big, smooth body moving over her, his breathy groans sounding against her ear as he pounded into her and she drank deeply from him.
Oh God. Was she masochistic? Why was she doing this to herself?
“When this meeting is over, we can stop for food. I feel your hunger again.”
You don’t know the half of it.
Kel smiled tightly, and her laugh sounded forced as she darted a panicked look over her shoulder at him. “You know me, always hungry.”
She turned the last corner and hit the doors with the heel of her hand a bit harder than she initially intended, but that was okay. She needed that little sting and the sharp sound of the door slamming against the wall from the force of her hand. It focused her as she stepped into the main office that housed all the agents on a central floor. Even though it was late, there were still a couple agents hard at work at their desks.
And her boss standing across the room, one dark brow cocked.
Okay, that was a good motivator to get her to focus.
“Agent Sheridan. It’s nice of you to finally check in. I trust you have progress to show for your absence.”
“Yes, sir, I do,” Kel called back to him. Anger curled up in her from her connection to Gabe, and she quickly snapped up her arm to stop Gabe from walking around her to confront her boss. She knew he was irritated by the tone of voice her boss had used with her, but he couldn’t know that Kye Forestor didn’t have any other tones to use. That was it. Take it or leave it. “Back off, Tarzan; Jane’s got this one.”
Gabe held back, though she could feel the amount of control it took. Comfortable that he wouldn’t pull that blade he was caressing with one hand, she strode across the floor.
Another agent leaned his chair back into her path with a wicked smile. Before his mouth could even form around the words she knew were coming, she slapped the back of the chair with an open palm, sending it toppling all the way over. He hit the ground, feet in the air.
“Shut up, Kling,” she snapped dryly as she continued on. She hadn’t seen most of the guys she worked with since that damn stakeout in the alley where she’d been discovered by the cleanup crew wrapped around Gabe. Had that only been two days ago? That old adage must be true, she thought with no little sarcasm, time did fly when you were having fun.
“Evening, sir,” Kel greeted her boss. Kye Forestor was more than her boss. He’d picked her up out of the gutter, where every redeeming quality in her had been dying a slow, painful death, and gave her self-respect again. He’d taught her that physical strength wasn’t always the answer and instilled a sense of honor and integrity in her when the words were fading memories. He gave her a purpose. Hell, yeah, he was more than a boss to her. He was one of the few men she respected. “We just came from the lab.”
Forestor’s pale eyes slid from Kel’s face to pin Gabe, his expression hard, the sharp angles of his face harsh.
“So I heard. Luckily all we lost were doors,” Forestor said, his cold eyes still fixed on Gabe, who tensed up next to her. Kye could possibly be the most dangerous man she’d ever met, and she knew he was absolutely the strongest. His family was believed to be the oldest and strongest line of Guardians. They had once been the personal guard of the Matriarch, the most powerful and revered female of the Elementals. “Marshal Ferrar.”
Gabe met Kye’s stare with a nod, saying nothing. He obviously didn’t like the threat that radiated from every orifice of her boss. His hands were caressing the handles of his blades again. That was one battle she did not want to see. Especially right now, maybe not ever.
Kel stepped in front of Gabe. “We’d like to fill you in on what we have so far.”
Forestor’s pale eyes flickered in surprise as they darted between Kel and Gabe, going over his bloodied shirt. His nostrils flared and his dark brows lowered before he gave a curt nod. “Meeting room one.”
With a sigh, Kel followed him up the five stairs to the raised level open to the desks below that housed all the upper level managers and meeting rooms. Forestor opened a door and smoothly walked across the room to gaze out the window with his hands clasped behind his back. The lights had heat sensors and immediately came on as they entered.