Bite the Bullet (Bitten Book 5) (21 page)

“Time for girl talk,” Donna stated, hooking her arm through mine. “We haven’t been able to spend time together since you got here. I’ve missed you.”

She guided me into the kitchen, Kerry trailing behind us.

“I’ve missed our girls’ nights,” Kerry mused. “Goddess, what has it been—several months—since the last one?”

“Yeah.”

“Pick your poison,” Donna said as we gathered around the island in the kitchen.

I really wanted something strong and alcoholic, but I didn’t want to dull my judgment. “I’ll have tea,” I answered with a sigh.

“With whiskey?” Donna asked.

“I need to have a clear head.”

She frowned. “I guess I should keep a clear head too.”

“I’ll have what you’re having,” Kerry said.

Donna got down a teapot and cups. “This isn’t much like girls’ night,” she complained.

“This will all be over at some point. We can get dressed up and go out,” I promised. “Or we could sit around and drink sangria in your hot tub.”

“I vote for that. Girls’ night out is fun and all, but that hot tub is magic,” Kerry insisted.

“God, when did we get so old?” Donna asked, putting tea and hot water in the pot.

“We didn’t get old,” Kerry answered, “We found men. They settled us down, dammit.”

I grinned at her words. “I don’t know about that. I’ve always liked staying in. You’re the party animal.”

Donna shrugged. “I can’t help it if you two are boring.”

We laughed as she removed the infuser from the pot and began pouring tea.

After we’d all taken a sip, Donna leaned forward. “Now that I have you without Asher, you have got to tell me what in the hell happened. The last time I talked to you, he annoyed the shit out of you and now you’re giving him googoo eyes every time I turn around.”

“He kinda grew on me,” I admitted.

“Like a fungus?” Kerry asked, batting her lashes innocently.

I hadn’t dated a lot over the last few years. I was always too busy at work and most of the men I met considered me one of the guys. Probably because the only men I met worked with me.

Because my love life was woefully lacking, I didn’t talk much about it with my friends. It wasn’t intentional but now that I had something to share, I found it difficult.

I took another sip of my tea. “Well, he’s a sweet talker.”

Donna and Kerry stared at me blankly.

“I’m sorry, did you say
sweet
talker?” Donna asked. “What does that even mean?”

“He says the right thing at the right time.”

“How?” Kerry piped in. “Give us an example.”

I hesitated.

“Oh, come on, tell us,” Donna insisted. “I tell you everything.”

My eyebrows lifted. “Uh, yeah. Usually it’s major TMI.”

“Okay,” she sighed. “You don’t have to say.”

“He said he was born to be with me,” I blurted out. “And that I was made for him.

“Oh, that
is
sweet talk,” Kerry teased.

“He loves me,” I mumbled.

“What was that?”

I could see the smile Donna was fighting when she asked that question.

“He loves me,” I repeated louder.

“He’s been nuts about you since the moment he laid eyes on you,” Kerry stated. “You never seemed to notice, but he always watched you when you were around. Not that he saw you often, but when he did…the look in his eyes made my knees weak.”

She was right. I hadn’t noticed the way he watched me. I was so intent upon avoiding him that I hadn’t allowed myself to see it.

“What I really want to know is how’s the sex?”

I nearly choked on the tea I was drinking.

“Jesus, Donna. Are you trying to kill me?” I sputtered.

“I’m curious too,” Kerry admitted. “Is sex as a vampire better than sex as a human?”

I buried my head in my hands.

“I can attest that it isn’t necessarily better as a vampire, but it is definitely better if you’re
with
a vampire,” Donna joked.

Kerry laughed. “That is so very true.”

They both faced me, wearing the same expectant expression.

“Okay, so sex with a vampire is pretty damn awesome,” I confessed. “And sex
as
a vampire is amazing too.”

Donna lifted her mug. “To the sexual prowess of vampires.” Then, as we clinked our cups together, she cried, “And the Highlanders!”

I had to laugh. Donna’s obsession with Highlanders was well known in our group, and somehow she’d ended up with her own kilt-wearing, Scot warrior. Talk about a fantasy come to life.

Kerry shushed us. “We need to quiet down. The guys will be in here in a minute, asking if we’re drinking booze with our tea.”

As I looked at my friends, I realized exactly how much I’d missed them, their bawdy sense of humor, and the resulting wildly inappropriate jokes. I hadn’t realized what a toll the isolation had taken on me until now.

Cornelius had taken more from me than he deserved, and he wouldn’t be taking anything else. Except maybe a bullet.

*     *     *

A short time
later, Conner interrupted our impromptu tea party. Surprisingly, he wasn’t looking for Donna, but for me.

“Shannon, I could use your expertise in the study.”

“Uh, okay.” I got to my feet, shrugging my shoulders at Donna when she looked at me questioningly.

“What expertise, babe?” she asked him.

“We’re attempting to identify and fortify the weak areas in the house. Since Shannon has experience in the security field, I thought she could help.”

“That I can do,” I stated, moving toward the kitchen door. “Do you have blueprints of the house, a map of the grounds, and all your security system specs?”

Behind me, Kerry muttered, “Goddess, it turns me on when you talk shop.”

I glanced over my shoulder. “I heard that.”

She smirked at me. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

Kerry’s tendency to elicit a response with smartass remarks was something I was accustomed to. I just shook my head and kept walking.

I spent the next eight hours staring at page after page of plans, maps, and security grids. It was just after midnight when Asher put a hand on my shoulder.

“You need to get some rest.”

“I just want to finish this—”

“All right, I need to get some rest and I’d like you with me,” he insisted. “We have time to finish this. It will be at least two weeks before Kerry is ready.”

When he put it like that, I didn’t really feel like arguing anymore. My head ached, my eyes were blurry, and I needed some sleep too.

“Okay,” I agreed.

Asher and I went upstairs to our room and got ready for bed. When I stretched out on the mattress, I could swear I felt my entire body sigh with relief. Sleep hadn’t been high on my list of priorities the last few days.

“I swear this bed might be heaven,” I groaned.

Asher rolled me over to face him and pulled me against his side. I rested my cheek on his shoulder and draped my arm over his abdomen. Then I lifted my leg and laid my thigh over his.

“Comfortable?” he drawled.

“Very,” I answered with a sigh. “Now I know that this bed is heaven.”

He chuckled softly. “Get some sleep. We’ll work on saving the world tomorrow.”

“Someone’s gotta do it,” I muttered just before I drifted off to sleep.

I
looked up
from the security plans I was studying when my phone rang.

It was Kerry.

“Hey, Kerry. I’m a little busy right now, can I call you back?”

“No, you can’t. This is important.”

I sat up straighter. “Is something wrong? Do you need help?”

“Not exactly.”

When she didn’t continue, I demanded, “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Rhys wasn’t completely truthful with us. At least, I don’t think he was. We don’t have to use another
animavore
to kill Cornelius. There’s another ritual, one I’ve never heard of before. We just need the blood of his maker.”

“What? How did you find this out?”

“It was in one of the books in my library. A book that only shows up when I need it.”

That made no sense to me, but I wasn’t going to argue with her. I had visions of the past, present, and future and I drank blood to survive. I wasn’t exactly a reality check myself.

“Okay, but can we get the blood of his maker?” I asked.

“I already have it.”

“How?”

“It’s in the book. Apparently, Gaius had a crisis of conscience when he created Cornelius and
Valerius
, also known as Rhys. Either that or he wanted to make a fail-safe in case he couldn’t control his little soul eaters. When he wrote the spell down, he wrote the last three lines and signed his name using his blood. My mother must have found the original and bound it in this book. It was the only way to keep it completely hidden from anyone who might use it for the wrong reasons. All I’ll need to do is scrape a little of that blood off the page and use it in the ritual. The ritual that I can perform without the aid of a soul eater.”

“So we don’t need Rhys’ help at all?” I couldn’t believe it. He had been sincere every time we spoke. I hadn’t sensed that he was lying to me.

“No. I don’t understand why my truth amulet didn’t pick it up. Surely he knew about the ritual his maker had created.”

Typically, I was the skeptic, but I couldn’t believe that my instincts could have been so wrong. “Could it just be that he didn’t know about the spell?”

Kerry paused. “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“Because in the history of Gaius, also in the book, his creations revolted and consumed him. Or at least one of them. He would have tried to perform the ritual in order to protect himself.”

“Have you told Finn yet?”

“Not yet. I wanted to see what your take was, because my first thought was the same as yours. I thought maybe he didn’t know.” She paused. “But what if he does? What if he’s a part of Cornelius’ convoluted plot?”

“Talk to Finn. I’ll talk to Asher and Conner. We’ll figure out what we should do.”

“I should have known. The truth amulet I made should have picked it up.”

“Kerry, I could say the same. I’m like a living lie detector and I never thought for a moment that he was lying to us. Don’t blame yourself.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to Finn and call you back.”

After we hung up, I sat at the desk for a few minutes, staring blankly at the papers in front of me. I didn’t understand why I saw Rhys standing with us in my visions if he intended to betray us all along.

When I realized I was brooding instead of doing what I needed to do, I took a deep breath and went in search of Asher. He and Conner were supposed to be on a conference call with an ally in the northwest.

I’d locked myself in the library for the afternoon, going over my ideas to strengthen Conner’s security for the fourth time. Okay, so maybe it was really the sixth. I may have been confident in our victory, but I wasn’t going to take a damn thing for granted.

The safety of the people I loved was the most important thing. Even after Cornelius was long gone, other enemies might want to hurt Conner and Donna. These plans would make my friend safer in the long run.

I walked downstairs to the study. I paused in front of the door, but didn’t hear anyone speaking, so I knocked.

“Come in.”

At Conner’s invitation, I opened the door and stepped inside. “I just got a call from Kerry. We need to talk.”

I told them everything that Kerry and I had talked about and also about the visions. The longer I spoke, the more neutral their expressions became. Their emotions were anything but bland though. I could feel their anger and betrayal beating at my skin from several feet away.

Conner picked up the phone on his desk and hit a button, lifting the receiver to his ear. “Send a group to the house where we met Rhys. If it’s empty, search it, then bring anything you find to me.” There was a pause and I could hear the person on the other end asking what to do if the house wasn’t empty. “If Rhys is there, bring him to me by any means necessary.”

He slammed the handset down and I heard the plastic crack. When he looked back up at me, his eyes were frightening. Donna always said they were electric and now I saw why. Sparks of neon blue fire seemed to snap in their depths. I wouldn’t have been surprised if his gaze burned my skin.

“I don’t care what you see in your visions. Rhys hid this information. Now I have questions that he needs to answer.”

“He may not have known—”

“Shannon, no,” Asher snapped.

My eyes went to him and I knew they were wide. I imagined I looked surprised. And I was. He’d never spoken to me like that before.

I was also pissed.

“I’m not a fucking dog, Asher. Don’t you dare speak to me as if I am.” I looked at them both, my eyes going back and forth between them as I forced myself to stay calm. They were angry. No matter what I said or did, it wouldn’t penetrate right now. I’d have to wait until they weren’t so enraged. “You know what, neither of you is in the mood to listen anyway. We’ll talk later.”

“No, we won’t,” Asher stated. “Conner and I will take care of this. You’re my mate, not a Council member. You don’t have a say in the final decisions.”