Of course, this Justin, whoever he was, didn’t look too fazed by her. He continued to watch me, that heated grin still on his face as I finished wiggling around to get the shirt in place, holding back the whimpers more than once as I jarred my arm. Colleen couldn’t get here fast enough. She was a witch who knew how to heal and while some innate part of me rejected needing help from anybody, I couldn’t be handicapped with a busted arm, either.
Feeling the weight of that watchful gaze, I slid the man another look. His eyes were intent as I finished buttoning up the shirt one-handed. “The way you act, you’d think you’ve never seen a woman’s breasts before,” I muttered.
“Oh, I’ve seen breasts before.” That grin widened. “That doesn’t mean I’m fool enough to pass up the opportunity to admire them any chance I get.”
Since there was no safe answer to that, I just ignored him. “Anybody want to fill me in on what’s going on?”
Next to me, TJ sighed.
The witch opened his mouth.
“Shut it, Justin.”
Justin. I flicked him a look, a longer one this time. He was still smiling, a sly one that suited his pretty features. And he
was
pretty, even under those fading bruises.
“Justin’s a freelance witch,” TJ said, drawing my attention back to her. “I’ve been having…issues. Somebody is running drugs through here and claiming ties to me.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That’s bullshit. You aren’t into drugs.”
“Only because it’s not worth the hassle.” She shrugged and looked away. “And… there are sometimes unwanted complications. But this is different. This shit’s been laced with silver and it killed two dumbass wolves up in Orlando. Normally, I wouldn’t worry about it because anybody stupid enough to mess with night—”
“Night?” I’d heard that phrase, several times now. Somehow I didn’t think she meant the opposite of
day
.
She lifted a brow. “It’s a narcotic for shifters. Regular drugs don’t affect us. Metabolism throws it off. That’s why our alcohol content has to be higher in order for us to even get a hint of a buzz and why I told you it’s off limits for you. It would put you on your skinny ass—
if
you’re lucky. Anyway, Night is a narcotic for shifters. This stuff is poison, though. It’s tainted and whoever is selling it knows it and doesn’t care. One of the wolves that got a bad dose was fifteen. He’s still in a coma. His body can’t throw off the silver and he took so much in, he stopped breathing for a while. He might wake up. He might not.”
I closed my eyes. “Kids. They are selling it to kids.”
“Somebody is.” Her voice was grim. “So that’s why Justin is here. Banner won’t get involved unless it affects humans and I don’t want to mess with the Assembly.”
What a surprise. TJ wouldn’t touch the Assembly—the governing force for the non-humans—with a ten foot pole. I flicked the witch a measuring gaze. “So you looked for outside help.”
“I’m good at what I do.” He hooked his thumbs in the front pockets of his pants and cocked his head at me, studying me in a way that made me want to squirm. “You handle yourself pretty nice out there. You ever think of—”
“No.” I clambered out of the bed, belatedly noticing I was also missing pants. The shirt hid enough of me that I was decently covered but I still felt exposed. Heading to the closet, I pulled it open and grabbed a pair of black jeans before I turned around.
Both of them watched me. “You sure about that?” Justin asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
He lifted a shoulder, the movement graceful, lazy. But the gleam in his eyes had me gritting my teeth. “Well, you look like a little bit of nothing. But you went after a rat pack and helped bring them down. There’s gotta be something to you.”
The rat pack.
Yeah, thanks for mentioning
them. I fought the urge to flip him off as a chill raced down my spine. The rat pack was something I tried not to think about. I didn’t want to remember any of it. The rats, the vampire who’d ended up helping me…Mandy.
“This little bit of nothing already has a job. One that doesn’t involve getting bloodied.”
“Yeah. You work in a bar and serve up beers. Must be fascinating.” His dry tone grated on my skin like sandpaper.
I curled my lip at him and then disappeared into the bathroom, kicking the door shut behind me. Then I just stood there, my broken arm bound to my chest.
He’d leave.
Then I could go back to my nice, boring existence.
Nice boring existence.
That was the plan.
I
liked
working at TJ’s. Working the bar was easy. I was safe here, I made decent money and money was
nice
. I could buy clothes and I had more clothes than I actually needed. I could buy lotion and soaps and I had way more of those than I needed. Sometimes, I spent an hour in the tub, just playing with the suds. That might sound crazy, but up until I’d landed at TJ’s, it was a luxury I’d never imagined. Up until I’d managed to escape the hell that had been my life, I’d lived in rags, my skin perpetually dirty. Having lots of clothes, even just the jeans and T-shirts I lived in was a nice thing. A very nice thing. Having soaps and lotions that smelled like a small slice of heaven was even better, especially since TJ had introduced to me to a herb witch she knew who was able to mix them up custom—nothing too overpowering for my sensitive nose—or TJ’s—but still enough to make me feel…
girly
.
This was where I belonged. Where I felt safe.
But two days later, I had to keep reminding myself of that. I felt like I was going to come out of my skin.
Something wasn’t right.
I’d felt like this before and it wasn’t just that night I’d gone out and found that irritating witch outside.
Months ago, I’d woken up, too restless to sleep, too energized to eat. Off kilter for half the day, then a woman had called. Her name was Colleen and we had a history dating back to my earliest days in Orlando.
Many of our first encounters involved TJ and they started off with comments like,
Let her look at you, kid, or I’ll sit on you.
Or
If you don’t sit still, I’ll just hold you down and she can do this without the tonic. You like crying like a baby? No? So shut up so
she can fix you
.
I can still remember the first time the conversation had gone like that. She’d glared at Colleen.
You really think threats are going to make her trust you more?
That wasn’t the beginning of our friendship. I didn’t trust people that easily. But I’d known her for years and when she’d called me, I’d managed to stop my pacing long enough to take the call.
Mandy…she’s missing
.
I didn’t know why she’d called me, but she insisted she knew I could help.
So I’d tried, thinking the woman had lost her mind.
I’d tried. And to my shock, I’d succeeded.
But the phone wasn’t ringing and I didn’t really want to sit around and wait for another call, or some idiot witch to get whaled on, either.
If I could, I’d go running, take my weapons to the gym downstairs and try to practice, anything to burn off this energy if I thought it would help. Except I was in the middle of my shift. I tightened my hand on the smooth surface of the bar, set my jaw and tried to think through the adrenaline crashing in my head.
A hand brushed across mine.
Instinctively, I drew back, dropping my hand to the silver blade I wore strapped to my thigh. “Yes?” I asked, my voice calm, while everything else inside me chittered with energy, anxiety and nerves.
A wolf—shapeshifter, werewolf, whatever you want to call his kind—smiled at me. “I like TJ’s choice in help these days.” His lids drooped while his nostrils flared. “You smell like…”
“You don’t want to finish that.” TJ’s low, rough voice filled the room. “Kit, tell him what he owes so he can pay up and get out.”
The wolf looked at me a moment longer, and then slid a smile toward TJ. “Ah, come on, TJ. I don’t mean anything by it. If she’s going to work here, she oughta…”
A heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder. Goliath, a mountain of a man who watched the door and TJ and everything else that went on in here, stood at the wolf’s back. “You don’t want to argue, do you, Rogers?”
Something uncomfortable crept up my back as the two shapeshifters standing in front of me began to bleed off that awful power some of them carried inside them. It was a mark of their strength and it both terrified and fascinated. Part of me wanted to just run out of the room. The bigger part of me was irritated. I’d dealt with worse than this and here I was, still standing. The reason Colleen had ended up having to heal me that first time was because I’d gotten into a fight—of the bloody and final kind—with a newly changed werewolf. I hadn’t known he was already on TJ’s watchlist until later, but that still didn’t change the fact that I’d been the one to walk away.
Taking a step forward, I met the wolf’s eyes. “I want to hear this,” I said, challenge threading into my voice. “Just what do I smell like?”
Filthy pig
—the whisper rose from the back of my mind and I steeled myself. Nothing he said could really be any worse than having my grandmother, cousins, aunts tell me that I was little more than a pile of offal, right?
“Kit…” TJ’s voice was soft.
It still slashed into me and I whipped my head around, staring at her. “I’m the one he’s messing with. I figure I got a right to know what he’s getting at.” Then I looked back at him. Leaning in, I stared. “So. Tell me.”
Gold flared in his eyes and he smiled, a smile that was predatory, mean. Hungry.
It sent a chill down my spine.
“You smell…” He closed his eyes and breathed in again. “You smell like food. And sex. You’d probably be really good…for both.”
Blood rushed to my face. Heat flared in my hand, something that had nothing to do with embarrassment, though, and everything to do with nerves and fear. Something whispered in the back of mind, but I ignored it.
“That’s even better.”
Easing forward, I brushed my hand against the silver-plated Louisville Slugger under the bar. It rested on two hooks and I knew just how it felt in my hands. “Really?” Narrowing my eyes, I cocked my head. “Come closer and see what you smell.”
“That’s enough,” TJ said, her voice throbbing, a snarl beating under it.
“You going to be there at my back for the rest of my life, TJ?” I demanded, not taking my eyes from the smirking wolf in front of me.
I don’t know what drove me. Maybe it was the recklessness that felt like it lined my blood vessels all day. Maybe it was the way his smile widened and now, it looked decidedly wolfish.
“You’ll still smell like meat.” His lids drooped. “And sex.”
Goliath’s hand, to my shock, fell away from his shoulder.
“You won’t say that in a few seconds.”
He laughed. A split second later, he lunged.
I’d been forced onto the training fields when I was just a child. I was twenty now and I’d been carrying a blade for so long, weapons almost felt like a part of me. I was no stranger to pain, either. I’d had my arm shattered, my collar bone busted, the skin of my back laid open to the bone.
From the time I was a child, I’d been tortured, beaten down, all but broken. The sound of her voice was a whisper in my blood even now.
Useless waste…so weak. So pathetic.
Time slowed to a crawl, even though I knew it was all in my head.
I already had the bat in my hand and I was moving, swinging as he cleared the bar. It connected with his head, a resounding thud I felt all the way up my arms. I moved again as he went down, this time bringing the deadly metal down on the back of his head, hearing the solid
crack
of bone.
Heat flared in my hand.
The voice in the back of my head now wasn’t that ugly whisper, but a joyous, gleeful song.
Call me!
I let her come. A length of silver gleamed in my hand a moment later. Once, the sword had belonged to my mother and now she came to my call. I danced back, hurling the bat down as I settled myself into position, my sword up and ready.
Seconds passed and I waited.
The wolf wasn’t old, but he wasn’t weak, either.
Within a minute, he was on his feet, wobbling a little and his eyes were unfocused. Blood and other things stained his hair while fury blistered his features.
“You…” he rasped, his voice thick.
“Do I still smell like meat and sex?”
“You smell like something dead,” he growled. “You just don’t know it.”
“Blah, blah.” I braced myself as he lunged at me. One slice of the sword had him howling and leaping back in shock.
Weres weren’t used to dealing with weapons, a fact I’d learned a long time ago. They fought with claw and tooth and brute force, things I didn’t possess, and never would. They knew the danger, but they never expected somebody like me to be fast enough.
The shock of silver, something poisonous to his kind, hit him with blazing pain. I bet. A few seconds passed and then, as I saw his muscles tensing, I leaped up onto the bar.
Never let the opponent get the high ground.
One of those lessons beaten into me.
A hand with nails going black swiped out at me and I jumped out of the way just in time.
Behind me, somebody muttered, but I didn’t look away from the wolf in front of me.
Distraction could be deadly.
This time, when he came at me, he was focused on nothing but me, no taunts, no jibes—he wanted my blood and nothing else. I flipped away, twisting my body mid-air so that I landed facing him. I heard wood screeching and realized people were pushing furniture out of the way.
He was only a few feet away now and was starting to lose control of his human form. Fuck. As he drew closer, I held my ground and shoved my left arm up, blocking him as he lunged for my throat. The other hand held my blade and that, I drove deep, deep into his gut.
It wasn’t exactly the recommended technique, but it had the desired outcome.