Blade Song (8 page)

“And if I decide to haul you elsewhere?”

“Try it.” I smiled. “Please, try it. The only way you’ll get me into a restaurant with you is if you drag me in there kicking and screaming.”

I cracked one eye to look over at him. “I’m pretty sure your beloved Alpha frowns on that.”

I’d heard a couple of her cats had gotten a little tanked a year ago. Shifters couldn’t get drunk–they just burned through the alcohol. But they get high. The drugs had to be made specifically for their bloodline; do it right, though and it could work. These two had gotten very, very wasted.

It wasn’t the drugs that had been the problem. They’d behaved…badly.

Shifters didn’t like it when other shifters misbehaved in public. They could go as crazy as they wanted on their own turf—it didn’t matter if they tore each other to ribbons for
looking
at each other wrong, but in public? Even an argument wasn’t nice. These two hadn’t argued—they’d tried to get naked and horizontal.

Somehow, I didn’t think Damon wanted to drag me into a restaurant kicking and screaming.

“Fine,” he growled.

It was a low, angry sound that filled the entire car. If I hadn’t been so pleased about finally getting the better of him, I might have been a little scared. Okay, so what if my heart slammed up into my abused throat and I could all but taste the panic crashing through my veins?

I’d won something. So what if it was a piddly little pissing contest. It was something.

“Ma’am…I need your order…” a voice said uncertainly as several people behind us started to lay on their horns.

I said, “Diet Coke.”

Then I looked pointed at Damon. He glared at me. “You need to eat.”

I groaned and banged my head against the seat’s headrest again.

Snarling filled the car and then he finally growled out an order. One that would have probably fed about four humans. I wasn’t surprised. Shifters ate a lot. Earlier at Burger King, I’d watched as he’d wolfed down three Whoppers.

Even when my throat didn’t feel like it had been battered into bits, I couldn’t eat a quarter of what he did. And I’m not one of those wilting females who didn’t like to eat. I was actually pretty damned hungry, but there was nothing here I could eat and I wasn’t going to torture myself by trying.

Ten minutes later, we were pulling out of the driveway. He tore into the food and I sipped at my drink, wincing at the sting of it. Home. Maybe a drink laced with whiskey. That would feel good. Then bed.

I’d hide out in my bedroom with my files, maybe a book in case I couldn’t concentrate—

A foil-wrapped sandwich got dumped in my lap. “You need to eat.”

I lowered my drink to the cupholder. A red light was coming up. After I’d stopped, I unwrapped the gooey mess and dropped the foil onto the console. Then, once I’d taken off, I threw the sandwich out the window.

“Hey!”

I smiled. “Not interested in eating that, thanks.”

Yes. I needed to eat, but anything I ate right now would
hurt
and I wasn’t about to let this son-of-a-bitch see that.

“Are you always this immature?”

I shrugged and licked some of the cheddar cheese of my fingers. “Depends on the company. When I’m around abusive, arrogant assholes, I tend to get very immature.” The pain in my throat was going to be an issue for a few days. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t deal with, I knew, but I also couldn’t keep avoiding eating for the next twenty-four or forty-eight hours, however long it took my body to deal with the swelling.

So I could either suffer and starve for the next couple of days…or I could hit up a friend. It seemed silly to suffer and starve when I had a friend who could do something about the pain.

Decision made, I headed out of town.

I hadn’t seen Colleen in a few months, but I figured she wouldn’t mind if I swung by this late in the evening.

“Where are you going?”

Drumming my nails on the steering wheel, I said, “You know…I’d really planned on being able to enjoy the silence tonight. After the shit day I’ve had, I’d really, really needed a quiet night.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly enjoying your company, either.”

My friend was in her garden.

Colleen spent a lot of evenings there, and even more nights, especially since Mandy’s death.

Once upon a time, she’d tried to pretend to live a nice, mortal life, but after her daughter had passed away, Colleen Antrim had given up that pretense. Mortal medicine hadn’t saved her kid. Witchery wouldn’t have saved the girl, either, but at least witchery wouldn’t have made the suffering worse.

Mortal medicine had.

The poor girl had lost so much weight, her hair, her strength…everything. All because they kept holding out hope.

In the end, leukemia had gotten her anyway.

Colleen didn’t bother coming out to greet me and I wasn’t surprised.

I’d tried to convince the asshole bodyguard to wait in the car, but he didn’t. He was polishing up the fourth order of fries and standing three feet away as I lowered myself to sit in the dirt next to Colleen.

“Hi, sweetheart,” she said absently, stripping away the dead leaves from a plant I couldn’t name. I knew my way around herbs and such, but Colleen liked the really exotic ones. I thought maybe this one was some sort of poppy. I couldn’t be sure, but the leaves looked right.

“Hi, Leenie.”

She frowned at the sound of my voice. I reached over at touched her hand, focusing hard. Witches were as different from one to another as shifters were. Different abilities, different gifts. Colleen had a gift for healing and empathy—it had made it that much harder on her when she hadn’t been able to heal her daughter. She caught the intensity of my thoughts, though, thank God, and didn’t speak out loud.

What is wrong with your throat, Kitasa
?

Her question came more in images and feelings than actual words, but I picked it up it up well enough.

Don’t ask right now. But can you help
?

She went to reach up and I caught her wrist, shaking my head.

Sighing, she just stared into my eyes.
There is a lot of damage. A lot of swelling. The bruising is just the beginning. I’m surprised you can talk. How is your breathing
?

I shrugged.
Hurts to swallow. Hurts to talk. Haven’t eaten a damn thing and it’s making me cranky
.

A husky laugh escaped her. “Imagine that. Come along.”

As we walked by Damon, she gave him an ugly look.

He snarled at her only to have the sound trapped in his throat. Literally. I felt the prickle of Colleen’s magic and it made something inside me feel all warm and fuzzy.

I smiled. “Damon…this is Colleen Antrim. Of the Green Road Witches. She’s one of their Healers.”

They were one of the strongest witch houses in the country. And even an asshole shapeshifter wasn’t going to fuck with one of their healers.

I swept in front of her, letting myself smile a little.

And it turned into a full-fledged grin a few minutes later when Colleen locked him out of her house. The door alone wouldn’t have kept him out. But the magic did.

As she leaned back against it, the warmth of her wards settled around me and she folded her arms over her chest. “Okay. He can’t hear us now. Talk.”

“Can you fix this first?”

“There.” Her hands fell away and she studied my throat with critical eyes. “It’s the best I can do unless you want a full healing.”

“I can’t.” Shaking my head, I got up and went to the mirror. I swallowed tentatively and sighed in relief. It ached a little, but it was more like the injury was a week old instead of hours. Grimacing, I stared at the mottled line of bruises that lingered. They’d faded to a sickly yellow and green that wasn’t really any more appealing than the blue and black from earlier. “Can’t you do anything about those?”

“Not unless you want a full healing,” she said again.

“No.” A full-healing would drain me and leave me down for a good twenty-four hours. I didn’t know if the crazy cat-bitch would give me twenty-four hours. And…blowing out a sigh, I let myself acknowledge the fact that I wouldn’t take time away from the job. The boy needed help. I needed rest and I’d let myself take it, but I sure as hell wasn’t going go down for a day just because I had a sore throat. After another look at my neck, I explained what had happened and looked up to find her watching me with resignation in her eyes.

“Just what were you thinking, goading a cat-shifter that far?” Colleen asked.

I shrugged and prodded my throat again. Earlier, the flesh had felt hot to touch, inflamed, I guessed, but it was better now. This was definitely better. “I wasn’t trying to. He’s just an asshole.”

“Pity. He’s hotter than hell,” she murmured.

“All the good ones.”

We met each other’s gaze in the mirror and grinned. “The hot ones are either taken, one of the walking dead or not worth messing with.”

He definitely fell into the last category.

Flicking a glance at my watch, I said, “I need to go. He’s been out there fuming almost fifteen minutes now. If I push my luck, he’s probably going to try his hand at breaking your wards.”

“Let him try. He’ll end up hurting more than he can possibly imagine. It will serve him right.” She sniffed.

I shrugged. “Nah. Not worth you having to rebuild them.” I grabbed my things from the couch and stood up. “I…ah…I need a favor. It’s…”

Her eyes went dark.

There wasn’t much that would have me hesitating with Colleen and she knew it.

“What is it, sweetie?”

“The job I’m on. The boy.”

“The runaway.” She inclined her head.

“Yes.”

Her child had run away, too. Her sick child, the one she’d lost.

“Can you ask if anybody has heard anything about him? He’s close to spiking. He’ll probably set off alarms wherever he goes.”

Her face twisted in sympathy. “That’s a dangerous mess there, Kit. Why did they drag you into this? Don’t you know better than to take jobs like this from the cats?”

“Hell, yes. I…” I rubbed my hands over my face. “It was the boy.”

“The boy,” she murmured. “What did they do, show you a picture of him? Sing you a sad song about him?”

“Like a song would bother me.” I plucked a non-existent thread on my vest.

“A picture, then. Damn it, Kit. How do you land yourself in this kind of trouble?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” I muttered.

“Well, it looks like they are already working on that.” She reached up and touched my throat.

Truer words
…

We made it to the car before Damon spoke.

I enjoyed the reprieve.

But the second the doors closed, he laid back into me. “You don’t seem to get this…you’re stuck with me, Kit.”

“Nope. Not quite getting it yet, sorry.”

He leaned in, staring at my face, then he cocked his head, studying my throat, craning his head to look at my face. When he went to push my hair back, I smacked his hand away. Surprisingly, he let me.

“Your voice is different.”

“Allergies,” I lied. “Colleen’s a wonder. I didn’t have the tea I usually drink so I came by for a refill and had a cup while we chatted.”

“Liar.”

I didn’t respond.

“You had her heal your throat.”

I tapped my nails on the steering wheel and contemplated the night sky as I started the car.

“Shit. I…” The thick slashes of his brows dropped low over his eyes. “You’re weaker than I thought. You’re not human and…hell. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that much damage.”

Years of abuse had taught me how to hide my emotions. I hadn’t had to use it as much in recent years, but I was going to have to brush those skills back up, I suspected. Starting now.

Without responding, I put the car into drive and pulled off.

“How human are you?”

I turned on the radio.

He turned it back off. “I asked you a question, little girl.”

Sighing, I looked over at him. “Where exactly is it in your job description or in that so-called contract that you get to bully me? How much human blood I carry doesn’t affect the job I’ll do.”

He stared at me.

I could feel the weight of it as I sped back toward town.

But when I reached over and turned on the radio, this time, he was quiet.

Ah…finally. Silence.

Chapter Six

There was a time when the town had been called Winter Haven. Full of snowbirds and pretty little houses and condos.

Now it was a hell-hole for some of the wolves and cats and witches who didn’t want to fall in line with the local packs, and who wouldn’t pay the tithe to join the witch houses. The witch houses weren’t a bad thing, per se. They offered protection and the strength of numbers, but you had to live by their rules. Some of us didn’t do rules very well.

Those people often ended up in places like this.

I wouldn’t call it the
slums
, exactly, because plenty of people here had money.

They just usually came about it in less than ideal ways.

The little sign that used to read
Winter Haven
now read
Wolf Haven
, thanks to some ingenious soul and his clever hand with a can of spray paint. It looked like they’d tried to cover it over with
Cat
and
witch
several times. But the wolves were the first ones who had come here, more than fifty years ago when the human world had first found out about us.

This place had been called Wolf Haven for a very long time.

It wasn’t going to get changed to
Cat
Haven just because somebody tried to spray it on a sign.

I parked the car but didn’t climb out. This was the very last place I wanted to be. I had good memories of this place…and bad. I’d still been broken when I finally stopped running. This was where I’d stopped. Sometimes, I wished I’d never left.

I could understand why some people thought Doyle might have come to Wolf Haven. A place where almost anybody could lose themselves. Lose themselves…hide. I’d hidden here for a few years myself.