Bite Me (London Undead) (5 page)

He didn’t blame her. It smelled wonderful. So did his meal. He applied himself with a hearty appetite to the double portion of bangers and mash with his own side.

After a few moments, he noticed her watching him eat. “You have a question?”

She blinked, then tucked an errant curl behind her ear. “I’d have thought, you being what you are, you’d be eating a lot more...protein.”

“Bangers are protein.”

She nodded. “True, but I wouldn’t have thought you’d like bubble and squeak.”

He looked down at his fried vegetables, mostly potato and cabbage with some peas and a bit of ham. Not many Weres liked it, she had the right of it there. “Well, I used to have it all the time before I was changed. I guess I never lost the taste for it. You don’t like it?”

She held up her hands. “I prefer mushy peas with dinner, myself. But a nice bubble and squeak is always pretty satisfying with breakfast.”

How did she manage to get him to grin over and over again?

* * *

It wasn’t until later, once he’d returned her back to the animal clinic, that he pushed her again. “I’ve answered your questions. You still haven’t answered mine from before supper.”

She blew out an exasperated huff, the puff of air lifting a wavy lock of caramel hair out of her face. She was probably grumpy again because he’d insisted on carrying her after they left the pub.

“Because I don’t want to tell you and don’t want to lie to you.”

“But you’d lie to your friend.” This female baffled him. She wasn’t cowed by him and wouldn’t lie to him, yet wouldn’t trust him with the location of her den.

A part of him hurt.

It shouldn’t. He barely knew her.

Somehow, it didn’t matter that he’d only just met her. She was already his.

“Well, and we’ve covered that particular talent of yours to smell a falsehood...” She began to squirm in his arms. “You don’t have to hold me up like this.”

He tossed her up in the air, getting a satisfying squeak, catching her easily then cradling her in his arms again. That was beginning to be his favorite game. “More comfortable?”

“You really have got to stop doing that.” But there was laughter in her voice beneath the admonishment.

He liked the feel of her—maybe held her a touch too close. But she didn’t seem to notice.

Especially since she still wiggled against him. “I didn’t mean for you to toss me about like a stuffed doll. I meant for you to put me down.”

The examination room was most familiar, so he headed for it as she continued to grumble. At least one of her crutches was in there. “Not likely to happen, I’m afraid.” The cinnamon-and-honey scent of her hair teased his nose. Made him want to taste her skin and see if it held the same spicy sweetness.

She beat at his chest with a small fist. He gave her his laziest smile.

She hit hard for a female.

“Fine then. It’s not far.” Exasperated, maybe a bit desperate. He had her at bay now, with nowhere to dodge to.

“Then you be still while I carry you there.”

Her response was both pithy and anatomically impossible. He laughed, and wondered whether she had the experience to know it wasn’t possible.

“I’ll need to bring my crutches so I can get back down here in the morning.”

He raised an eyebrow. It’d be an exercise in the ridiculous for him to carry the one crutch and juggle her, all while he dug up the other one. That is, if she even told him where she kept it.

Point to her.

“I’ll set you down here
if
you promise to stay while I get them. Otherwise, I’m taking you home and then I’ll come back to get them.”

She narrowed her eyes, visibly assessing where she stood in their verbal sparring match. Well fed, the color had returned in her complexion. She’d already proved to be exceptionally nimble in thought. “Fine. I promise.”

He placed her on the stretcher where he’d sat only an hour or two prior and caught up her crutch in one hand. “Where’s the other one?”

Her lips twisted in a rueful grin as she acknowledged his foiling of her plan. “Behind the front reception desk.”

Little chit had planned to try to scamper off on the one. As if she would have gotten very far. He could run down any human, much less catch up to her, well fed or no.

Still, he was having fun playing.

Danny wouldn’t hesitate to yank his tail over this if he’d seen it.

Violent, temper-driven Seth, pack alpha, playing games with a bitty human girl and enjoying every minute of it.

How long had it been since he’d been free of anger for any significant period of time? Yet with Maisie, he’d smiled more in the space of a few hours then he had in a year or more.

Since he’d lost Sarah.

He retrieved the crutch in short order, returning to find her perched right where he’d left her with wide, grey eyes and a supremely innocent look on her face.

“What are you up to? And why haven’t you got a coat?”

“It really isn’t all that far.”

“It’s cold outside.” He growled at her.

She shrugged. “When I went out earlier in the day to cool my head, I didn’t notice the cold.”

“Harder to draw your gun?” He took a guess.

She shook her head. “I’ve been meaning to get one. When I do, I plan to put holes in the pockets for easier access and have an extra reinforced pocket in the front that acts as a spare holster.”

Nice.

“Let’s get you home. You can tell me how many guns you own on the way.” He was genuinely curious. Where had she gotten them from, in a city where firearms were even more expensive with the rise of zombies?

The smile fled from her face and she fastened her gaze on the floor. She kicked her right foot out the way a kid would, sitting up on a high perch, then abruptly pulled it in and tucked it behind her left. “I
am
home.”

He studied her. Yeah, the right foot was twisted. However, she tried to use it too often for her to have been born with the condition. Then her statement sank in.

Not a lie.

“You live here.” It was a clinic. The windows to all the above floors were boarded up. They couldn’t be livable.

She refused to meet his stare but lifted her chin in a sharp gesture. “Upstairs. The floors above the clinic are abandoned space. Landlord hasn’t been able to rent out any of them as flats, in this building or the ones on either side, since last year. No one wants to live in them as they are and he’s too cheap to renovate them to make them worth the rent. Says he’d make more in insurance at this point.”

She bit off the last couple of words. Color rose up in her cheeks as she tensed with real anger. “If they’re abandoned, there’s no heat or water going to them.” He lifted his lip and bared his teeth. He didn’t like the idea of her in the cold, curled up with no comfort.

“I wash up down here before Brian gets in for the day.” She swept her arm out to indicate the whole of the clinic. “I’d sleep down here, but we lock it up and set alarms with motion sensors in every room but the kennels. I wouldn’t be able to move around at night at all. And Brian would know if I didn’t set the alarms at night. It’s what keeps the clinic, the whole building, safe.”

“Why doesn’t your friend know you’re squatting in abandoned flats?” He could remember the man’s name, but couldn’t say it. The attempt came out in a snarl.

Her friend should have known, should have seen through the farce. She deserved to be cared for much better than she’d been.

“Brian still has a family to care for, a mother and two younger siblings. Too many mouths to feed, and what we make at the clinic isn’t enough for him to stretch to cover me too. Even though he’d try. I’m saving up. I’ll have enough to afford a place of my own in time.”

Still...

“What happened to your family, Maisie? Where are your other friends?” A steady calm settled over him as he watched her. He was hunting now, hunting for the truth. It was important for him to know. He’d consider why later.

Her hands tightened on the edge of the stretcher and her shoulders hunched.

He waited. He didn’t push her more and wouldn’t ask again if she refused. The question was out there and whether she answered at all would determine if he’d come back.

“Do you fight with your...your pack mates? Is that what you call them?” she asked after a long moment.

“Yes.”

“Do they forgive you?”

* * *

Maisie studied the man standing in the middle of the room. Still shirtless, he didn’t seem to notice or care. He stood tall and confident, every fiber of him speaking of independence and strength.

Oh, he had a temper. She’d watched his rangy frame shake with it. It hadn’t scared her. Maybe even was a bit of a turn on, if she’d admit it to herself. More than a bit.

Amazing he hadn’t smelled it off her.

But then, she’d only just sponged him down in disinfectant an hour or so ago and had it all over her hands too. It would’ve been a miracle if he could smell anything besides the stuff.

“Most of the time, my pack mates will forgive.” He rolled his shoulders and muscles rippled across his chest. “They might not forget, and they might find a way to get even, but most of the time we forgive each other.”

She nodded. Her chest tightened. “Like a family.”

“Yeah.” His brows drew together in a scowl. Family seemed to be a difficult topic for him too.

Because of that, she trusted him enough to take the plunge into her past.

“I’d had a fight with my brother.” She stared down at her feet, right crossed behind the left. “It was stupid. They’d just started to broadcast the warnings about the zombie virus on the telly. Couldn’t believe how much it would cost to get out of London before the quarantine kept everyone here. They’d make us all pay to go someplace safer? He wanted to stay here, wait it out, keep the family together. I thought he was bloody daft.” She closed her eyes. “I’d stormed out of our flat, gone off to cool my head.”

It was a habit.

Silence, though Seth had crossed the room to stand just in front of her, in arm’s reach.

“My family, they came after me when they thought I’d been gone too long. Worried.” She’d been too angry, too upset to think about where she’d gone, the danger she’d put them in that night. “I’d gone to the gardens. I could find the Peter Pan statue from anywhere in the park, you see. Even if it wasn’t the original way the story’s Peter should look, I still loved the statue. Every time I felt mischievous, devilish, I’d go there. It was as if I could put my hands on the cool bronze of it and let go of the devil in me, you know? Go back to the real world with a level head.”

“It was your sanctuary.” He didn’t mock her. Maybe she imagined the understanding in his voice but at least he didn’t make fun.

She nodded. “It was their voices, calling for me in the dark, that probably attracted the zombies. Two of the things came from opposite directions. If I’d answered my mum and brother sooner, maybe we would have had time to get out of the park. We weren’t armed back then.”

And she hadn’t known how to shoot.

She’d fixed that.

“We didn’t recognize them for what they were at first. Thought maybe they were beggars.”

“You let them get too close.”

Too much knowing there. He’d probably seen a lot of zombie attacks. The telly broadcasts said the werewolf pack was hunting down zombies, keeping them in check. Told the general public to stay indoors and not hinder their efforts. Based on Seth’s comments, his pack truly was helping.

A relief, that.

But the werewolves hadn’t been there the night her mum and brother died.

“I was the only one that made it out of the park, because my brother kept shoving me ahead of him and cursing at me to run. Mum had tried to hold them back and my brother went back to save her.” She paused, swallowing past the horror building from the memories. “I didn’t listen to him. Again. I followed him to help. One got a hold of me. I fell and the thing dragged me along the ground, gnawing on my shoe. I didn’t see where Mum went, only saw my brother, diving at the thing, pulling it off of me. Then he told me if I didn’t run, their lives would’ve been wasted.”

She couldn’t speak anymore. Shame burned through her.

“You ran.” Seth reached out, brushed her hair away from her face. “It was good that you did, Maisie. Your brother was right. Their sacrifice would’ve been for nothing if you hadn’t survived.”

“They wouldn’t have been out there at all if it hadn’t been for me.” She choked on it. The irony was, she still went out into the night all the time. Maybe to look for their ghosts and say how sorry she was. Maybe to ask them if she could go with them. Still, she never let anyone follow her out there.

“They wanted you to live.”

She laughed, but there was no joy in it. “I ran, as best I could. But I was bleeding and my right foot burned with the pain of it. By the time I made it here, I was delirious with fever.”

“You’d been bitten.” The growl had returned to Seth’s voice.

Did he know his blue eyes turned golden when he got angry? When the wolf part of him took over? She looked back down at her feet.

“Brian found me in the foyer, dragged me into the treatment room.” She tilted her head back, closing her eyes against the bright ceiling lights. They’d blinded her that night. “He had to cut away the dying flesh on my foot, get ahead of the decay and the virus. There wasn’t time for anesthetic because the infection would spread through my bloodstream faster than the local anesthetic would. He managed it well, having put a tourniquet on below my knee to slow down blood flow just in case he’d have to amputate. My foot didn’t have a chance to heal right with that precaution.”

“Fast thinking.” There was approval in Seth’s voice, rather than pity.

Good. She couldn’t have withstood pity. The tears would have fallen and then she’d end up a crying mess.

“Brian’s always been a genius under pressure.” She brought her head back to rights, opening her eyes to look Seth in the face. “So there, you have my story. After my mum and brother died, I couldn’t afford our flat and Brian had already done so much, I didn’t want him to worry. All our other friends had the sense and the money to leave before the barricades started turning people back. Seemed perfect to squat in the apartments above the clinic until I’d saved enough to get a little place of my own. Save me the walk to and from work too.”