Deceptions: A Collection (44 page)

With a groan, I sat up, shuddering as the pain ripped through me.

Es sighed and stroked my head. “Stubborn girl. Be careful—I haven’t worked on your ribs yet.”

In the dim light, I could see them fighting. They’d go forever, I thought, if something didn’t stop them. It didn’t matter what Es said.

Something came in the form of the flashing silver lights of the Banner unit.

Disembodied voices washed over us, broadcast by a loud-speaker.

I also felt the ripple of protective magics settle in place, around me, the Banner cops and the witches around me. Es sniffed. “Really, as if I can’t care for myself,” she muttered. Then she lapsed into silence as a Banner cop started to speak.

“Jude Whittier. Alpha Damon Lee. Members of the Assembly, you are hereby under orders to cease and desist at once or face immediate action—sanctioned by the Assembly under Article Thirty-two A regarding Non-Human entities in a populated area, under emergency circumstances.”

I gulped.

Article 32A gave the Banner cops the right to blow them to high hell.

“Damon,” I whispered.

I don’t know if he heard me or if the Banner directive got through, but he shoved off Jude and stood.

Bleeding from more wounds than I could count, he shifted from one step to another and was human as he started towards us. “Desisting,” he barked out. Then he looked back at Jude. “Keep the fuck away from what’s mine, leech.”

Jude flowed up from the ground, paler than normal, his eyes still glittering and red. “Mine first, cat. I’ll challenge that with your Alpha…and she’ll acknowledge it. She won’t risk my wrath over a paltry little half-human.”

“Hey,” I snapped. “I don’t belong to you, jackass.”

Jude ignored me.

Damon didn’t, though. An odd little smile curved his lips as he paused, staring at me. Then he stopped and turned. “You didn’t hear them as they were talking, did you, leech? They said
Alpha
. Annette died today. You want to challenge my right? Take it up to the Assembly…and they’ve got different ideas on that antiquated idea. Ask Es here, but I suspect they’ll tell you to get fucked.”

“Oh, yes.” Es smiled. “We will. Vampires can no longer claim ownership just because they laid a bite on somebody…especially when you didn’t explain all it entailed, Jude. Naughty, naughty, that. But I can always address it when I go to session next week.”

I barely heard her.

I was too busy staring at Damon.

The cool weight of Jude’s fury struck us, but seconds later, he was gone, launching himself into the air. The air lashed us with the speed of his departure and I batted at my hair as it flung itself into my eyes.

“Damon?”

I think I saw him smile at me. But then the pain in my lungs ripped through me again as I took a deep breath. Darkness rushed up at me.

“It’s getting to be a pattern, healing you.”

I woke up in the healing hall. And once more, Es was by the bed. Damon was close by, although I couldn’t see him.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. No pain. Heaving out a sigh of relief, I murmured, “Oh, that’s lovely.”

“He shattered four of your ribs, child. And I do mean shattered. I had to work bone fragment from your lung tissue. If you’d been human, you might have died, silly girl. Whatever did you do to anger him so?”

Silly girl. Another person calling me silly. Although in this case….I popped one eye open and stared at Es. “I might have shot him through the heart with a wooden arrow.”

“Oh. That would do it, yes.” Her brow puckered and she looked around.

I followed the line of her gaze and saw Damon standing at the far end of the room, head bowed, arms crossed over his chest. He almost looked asleep, but I knew better.

“And here I thought you might have smoother sailing since Annette was dispatched. Jude will make just as bad an enemy, I fear,” she said quietly. Then she patted my arm. “You don’t do easy, do you?”

“Wouldn’t know it if it bit me on the ass.”

“Hmm.” She checked my arm one more time and then nodded to the table. “Drink the teas. I had to do a full healing whether you liked it or not. Between the damage on your lungs, your arm, your body was just too taxed for anything else. I’ll be off, but you call if you need me.”

I didn’t watch as she slipped away.

I couldn’t look at Damon, though, either.

“You killed Annette.”

His quiet sigh drifted through the room.

When he didn’t say anything, though, I looked up at him. “Why?”

“Not much choice.”

He blew out a breath and came my way, all caged, easy grace. Looking at him, I couldn’t even tell he’d been hurt. Faded denim clung to his legs and a black shirt stretched over his chest and arms, the sleeves rolled halfway up his arms. “I was heading into her chambers when Es sent me a text—something about some magic Kori had worked. She’d had one of her witches out there all morning and kept updating me, but the last message…” He paused and then looked at me. “One of the spells caught something from the guy we bought the bow from. There was vampire magic on him. And he was running scared. The vampires around her land aren’t going to be involved in what he was doing. I thought it was a stretch, but Jude seemed pretty damned determined to pull you off this job. Didn’t make sense—other people can do whatever he was wanting done, although I know you’ve got a rep for being a bulldog. I thought maybe that was the problem. You don’t let go. Plus…well, the reason I wanted to have you with me for Doyle was because you’ve got this uncanny way of figuring things out…”

He stopped, flexed his hands. “My gut told me I had to get back there. I walked into the lair and the first thing Annette did was attack. I was fine with that, expected it. Let her go for a few minutes and then begged leave. She wouldn’t. She went at me again, and again. I went to walk out and she called her seconds.” His hands flexed once more and a snarl rippled out of him. “Even if I wasn’t coming after you, I don’t like being a punching bag, although I take it when I need to. I heal and I can handle pain. But if I’d taken it yesterday, I wouldn’t have healed in time to get to you.”

I shuddered as I pictured that—I’d seen those kinds of beatings and felt furious as I imagined him just
taking
it. “And you call
me
a silly fool,” I muttered.

“Yeah.” A faint grin crooked his lips. “But I had reasons. Anyway…” He stared at me. “I almost didn’t make it anyway. The seconds were coming in and I told her I wasn’t doing this. She could either have her revenge on another day or she’d wished she’d let me walk.” His voice went flat, still and smooth as the surface of a mirror. “She laughed. The crazy bitch laughed. So I challenged her.”

Storms gathered in his eyes as he stared at me. “And now you don’t need to look at me and wonder if I’m one of those who stand by while somebody is tortured. It’s done, Kit.”

I felt those words in the very heart of me. I wasn’t sure if anything had ever hit me more deeply than that.

“Done.” He blew out a breath and shook his head. “The clan is a fucking mess and I have to go back by the end of the day to start cleaning out.”

He reached over and caught my wrist, stroked his thumb over it. “
Everything
is a mess and I’ve got a lot of unfinished business, baby girl.” Then he looked up at me through the fringe of his lashes. “But remember…this is permanent. You got me?”

I tugged on my wrist. As I expected, he didn’t let go. He came closer and I leaned in, pressing my lips to his. “Yeah. I got you.”

“Good.” He lingered there a minute and I wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pressing my face against his neck. “I have to go back. It’s going to be…rough for a while. You know that?”

“Didn’t you hear what I told Es? I wouldn’t know easy if it bit me on the ass.”

He laughed quietly. “You should try easier, at least.”

“Mmm. Might be nice.”

His hand smoothed over my hair and I snuggled closer. “I’m not done here yet. I’ll find the guys involved before I leave.”

“I figured you’d say that. Es is backing you up. She already agreed.”

I nodded. “Kori…” I swallowed. “Kori is dead. Somebody shot her through the heart.”

“I heard.” He pressed a kiss to my temple. “The humans will be running scared now. They’re easy to track like that. It won’t take you long. Still…you better stay safe.”

“Yeah, yeah. You do the same while you’re setting up housekeeping…Alpha.” I smirked at him.

He pressed a kiss to my smiling lips and then he pulled away. The storm clouds in his eyes were heavy and dark as he stood up.

It didn’t bother me too much.

“I mean it…you stay safe,” he said quietly. “Nothing hurts you. You stay safe.”

“I will.” His words echoed inside me as I held his gaze. I still had a job here to do and the protection of the Green Road while I did it.

As he walked away, I drew my knees to my chest and rubbed my thumb over the scars he’d given me.

It was odd, I decided. I had plenty of scars. Most of them unseen, though; scars on my heart that I’d carried for half my life or longer.

But these I didn’t mind having. Not one bit.

J.C. Daniels exploded in being in May of 2012. She’s the pen name of author Shiloh Walker and was created basically because Shiloh writes like a hyperactive bunny and an intervention was necessary.

J.C. is the intervention.

Also available

A Stroke of Dumb Luck (written as Shiloh Walker)

Night Blade

Broken Blade

Edged Blade

Bladed Magic

Misery’s Way

Final Protocol

Coming in 2016

Shadowed Blade

Enjoy an excerpt from Night Blade, Book Two in the Colbana Files below
…

“Since when does a shifter bar serve meat…you’re supposed to be on the menu,” the skinny one said. “Not having food served to you.”

“Oh, trust me. Nobody here wants to take a bite out of me.” I tapped my nails on the table, keeping my hand away from my blade. “I’m too stringy.”

“You’ll do.” He bent down and peered at me. “Get up. Get out. You’re in shifter territory which means if you get fucked over, it’s your own damned fault.”

When I didn’t move, he did. I don’t know if he was going to grab me or hit me nor did I really care.

Shoving the booth back from the table, I jumped into a crouch, hand gripping my sword. Three men had eased forward, surrounding him. The man seemed to think they wanted to play. “There’s not enough for everybody, boys,” he said, laughing.

“Chang?” one of them said.

“She can have him if she wants him.”

One gaped at him.

Another just shoved him at me.

Others took the big bastard with him down.

I wasn’t paying too much attention, though, because the fucker coming at me had decided to change his skin and there was nothing less attractive than a wererat in the nude.

Muscles bulged in places they shouldn’t and his legs were all out of proportion. He shouldn’t be able to move well, if life and science were fair, but he could. As he came at me with a screaming sort of hiss, I held steady until the very last second and then moved, burying my sword deep, deep in the cavity of his chest.

I shoved forward with all the strength I had in me as I did so, riding him down.

He wasn’t strong and his body had frozen as he took the silver of my blade. Now I was crouched on top of that misshapen body, smelling the way the silver burnt him, the stink of it in my nostrils while his body trembled and writhed under mine.

“Now. Who were you calling meat?”

The other one was roaring pitifully. From the corner of my eye, I saw him, struggling under the weight of four bodies and staring at us.

“Get the fuck off of me!” he shrieked.

I was pondering just how to answer that when the door opened and I felt the blast of heat rolling over me.

“You know, here’s the problem,” I said, leaning on my blade and staring down into his eyes. “One…you’re on neutral ground. Drake’s is very, very neutral and you attacked me for no reason. Two…I’m not human.”

I smiled at him. “My dad was…but my mother wasn’t.”

I could feel that heat spreading over me now and despite the insanity of the situation, my body was ready to jump up and down, all but giddy with pleasure. Damon was just a few feet away. I couldn’t hear him, I hadn’t seen him, but I could feel him.

“Since my mom wasn’t human, that means under the ANH charter, I’m not recognized as such.” I continued to watch the nerves bleeding into the man’s eyes. “Never mind the fact that if you hunt humans on neutral ground in East Orlando, you’re fucked. We hunt your kind down and eat you for breakfast here.”

“I want the fucking alpha,” he snarled. “Where’s the Lady?”

I laughed. “Oh, that’s funny. You’re a fucking rat and you want to throw yourself on the mercy of the cat’s alpha?”

“There’s no pack here! We have to align with somebody and you can’t deny me that right. That’s in the fucking charter,” he said and then he whimpered as I twisted my blade.

“Well, that brings us to the third problem…and really, it’s your biggest. If you’re smart, you’ll just move around until the silver in my sword shreds your heart,” I said quietly.

Damon took a step closer.

“I want the fucking alpha!”

“Kit. Introduce him to the third problem,” Damon said, crouching down by me.

“Sure.” I twisted the blade again. “You sure you don’t want to just kill yourself, rat?”