Enhanced: Brides of the Kindred 12 (The Brides of the Kindred) (8 page)

Chapter
Eight

It wasn’t until she got home that Mei-Li
realized someone had keyed her car.

There was a long, jagged scratch that ran
its entire length on the passenger side. It went from the headlight, across the
door, and up to the taillight in one unbroken line.

What the hell?
she thought uncertainly as she examined the scratch which
was silvery white against the dark blue of the rest of the car. She parked
right under a street light so the side of her little car was easily visible. At
first she thought the mark might be from some kind of accident but there was no
way—the scratch was too long. It was ugly and deliberate and clearly made by
someone with angry intent. But it hadn’t been there earlier today—Mei-Li was
certain of it. So who could have done it?

Randy Dungston,
whispered a little voice in her head. But no—he’d been
half blinded by pepper spray. Plus he had been in a hurry to get away before
the police arrived. Would he really have taken the time to key her car?

Maybe,
Mei-Li thought uneasily. It certainly seemed like the
kind of petty, vindictive thing Randy would do.
The kind of thing someone who
wanted to hurt you would do,
whispered a little voice in her head.

Mei-Li tried unsuccessfully to push it
away. It made her think of her dad, who was always trying to assign her a
security detail or at least a bodyguard. He always argued that because he was
on the World Council, she might be in danger if anyone found out she was his
daughter. Mei-Li had disagreed.

“Believe me, Dad, my clients aren’t
exactly socialites,”
she’d told him.
“I’m in less danger if I just live anonymously, like I want to.”

“I just worry about you, Pun’kin,”
he’d said.
“You shouldn’t be living in that
neighborhood and going all around the worst part of the city by yourself.”

“I’m fine,”
Mei-Li had assured him.

Now she repeated it to herself.

“I’m
fine,”
she muttered. “I’m fine
and so is everything else.” She felt better for saying the words out loud
because it seemed to make them more true. Everything was okay and she would
have the scratch on her car taken care of later. Tonight, she was too tired to
deal with anything else. She just wanted to get inside her little bungalow and
relax.

Her knee was killing her so she held her
shoes in one hand as she limped up the steps to her front porch. It was the
wrap around kind and one of the main reasons she had bought the house in the
first place. It was screened all around and had a porch swing in one corner
where she loved to sit and read at twilight when some of the heat of the Florida day had
dissipated. In fact, as she shut the screen door after herself, she could hear
the soft creaking of its chains as it swung in the breeze…

Mei-Li took another limping step and
stopped. There was no breeze tonight—the damp heat of the Florida night was absolutely breathless. So
what was making her swing creak?

“Hey there, you little chink bitch.”

A large shape disengaged itself from the
shadows on the front porch and suddenly Randy Dungston’s face was revealed,
floating out of the darkness like a bloated moon. His skin was red and
irritated from the pepper spray and there was a mean little smile on his skinny
lips.

“Oh!” Mei-Li’s heart seemed to skip a
beat. She stumbled backwards, reaching behind her for the screen door’s handle.
But before she could grab it, Dungston grabbed her, locking his big meaty fists
in the material of her jacket and blouse.

“Little cunt,” he hissed, pulling her
close and bathing her face in scotch fumes. “Chasin’ me off my own property and
spraying me with motherfuckin’ pepper spray.”

“Let go of me!” Mei-Li was fumbling with
one hand in her purse, searching for the small metal canister in question. For
a moment she thought she felt it but then it slipped away from her fingertips,
leaving her with nothing.

“Don’t think so,” Dungston said
belligerently. “I think I owe you one, sweetheart, and I’m here to pay up.”

“Leave me alone!” Mei-Li yanked back
against his grip, a violent motion that caused her silk blouse to rip open,
tiny pearl buttons bouncing everywhere. She would have gotten away if not for
the hold he still had on her suit jacket. As it was, all she succeeded in doing
was revealing her white lace bra.

“Hmmm.” Randy Dungston eyed her chest with
interest. “Doesn’t look like you got a whole lot but I bet whatever you do got
is nice, am I right?”

“Stop it!” Mei-Li tried to cover herself,
clutching the high heeled shoes she was carrying to her chest with one arm as
she continued to dig in her purse with the other hand.

“You got teeny little titties but I bet
you got those big, puffy nipples—right?” He leered at her. “You like to get ‘em
sucked sometimes, you little chink whore? Is that what you like?”

“No,
this
is what I like.” Mei-Li
had given up her frantic search for the pepper spray when she realized that she
was still clutching her best court shoes with their narrow, sharp heels in one
arm. Dropping one shoe, she grabbed the other tight and hammered the high heel
into Dungston’s bulging right eye…

Or she would have if he hadn’t moved out
of the way at the last minute. As it was, she only managed to skim the side of
his face with the heel. It left a long, narrow scratch that was probably
painful but hardly debilitating.

“That’s it, you little bitch!” Randy’s
piggy little eyes narrowed and he dragged her even closer. “I was just gonna
fuck you up. But now I think I’ll
fuck
you first,” he snarled.

“No! Let me go—get off me! Get—” The words
died in her mouth as her wish was suddenly granted. With no warning, Randy was
lifted up and away from her, to hang near the top of the porch. It almost
looked as though he was levitating.

As it happened, he lost his grip on
Mei-Li’s arms and his narrow eyes grew wide with fright.

“What…who…?” he gasped.

Actually, Mei-Li wanted to know the same
thing. What the hell was going on and who was responsible for it? Was her front
porch haunted?

Suddenly a tall figure in black stepped
out of the shadows. It was Six and he was holding Randy up by the scruff of his
neck like a dirty puppy. His right eye was cold and his left blazed like a
searchlight. His lips were narrowed to a thin, tight line.

“Hey…hey, put me down!” Randy gasped, catching
sight of his captor’s face. “What the hell, man! I wasn’t really gonna hurt
her!”

“You have made a grave error in judgment,”
Six told him. His deep, cold voice was a menacing growl that turned Mei-Li’s
blood to ice. “You have attempted to harm the female I came to protect and to
claim. This is an offense worthy of immediate termination.”

“Termination? What are you talking about
man? Seriously, what the hell?” Randy squawked, twisting in the huge Kindred’s
grip. “Let me down. C’mon, I swear I won’t bother her no more!”

“You’ll never bother anyone again.” Six
shifted his grip so that his massive hand was locked around the front part of
Randy’s thick throat. It was his left hand—the metal one, Mei-Li saw. As she
watched, he began to squeeze.

“Oh…shit,” Randy choked and then he
couldn’t get another word out. He began flailing and beating uselessly at Six’s
arm and the hand that was holding him but it was useless—the Dark Kindred’s
grip was as relentless as a hangman’s noose.

Mei-Li watched in horror as her attacker’s
face grew slack and his tongue began to protrude. She felt like she was in some
kind of a bad dream and she couldn’t wake up. Was Six really going to choke a
man to death while she just stood there and watched?

The thought seemed to bring her alive
somehow.
Holy crap—he’s really killing him! Right here on my front porch,
right in front of me—he’s killing him!

“Stop!”
she gasped, lurching forward to grab Six’s muscular arm.
It was far over her head and Randy’s dangling feet were in the way but somehow
she managed to get her hands around his bicep. It was as hard as iron. “Stop!”
she demanded again. “You have to stop!”

“Why?” His red left eye scanned her as
though searching for answers. “You told me this male would come back again and
again unless he was terminated. You said you could not come with me until he
was dead.”

“I never said that!” Or had she? Vaguely
she remembered saying something about how Randy would keep coming back until
the day he died unless he was stopped. But she’d never expected the big Kindred
to take her
literally.

“You did. You cited him as the reason you
could not come with me.” His grip on Randy’s throat loosened slightly but he
still dangled the other man in the air like a rag doll.

“But I thought you didn’t want me after
all!” Mei-Li protested. “You said you only came to make sure I could take care
of myself.”

“I thought that you could and then I saw
this male behaving suspiciously when he left the domicile where you first
encountered him.” He shook Randy who gave a choked, half-unconscious moan. “I
followed him and watched as he marked your vehicle.”

“So, you watched him key my car and didn’t
do anything about it? Thanks a lot,” Mei-Li muttered.

“I wanted to see what else he would do. I
followed him here and watched to see if you could fend off his attack on your
own. You could not.”

“What?”
Mei-Li was really angry now. “You stood there and
watched
him attack me? What is
wrong
with you?”

“There is nothing wrong with me but there
appears to be something considerably wrong with you—you cannot defend yourself
nearly as well as you at first led me to believe.”

“I was doing my best,” Mei-Li protested.

“Your ‘best’ was about to get you sexually
assaulted—I believe that was what he was alluding to, was it not?” He shook
Randy again.

Mei-Li felt her cheeks getting hot and she
was suddenly aware that her shirt was still gaping open, showing her white lace
bra.

“Just put him down,” she begged, clutching
her shirt closed. “You can’t kill him—especially not here on my front porch.
He’s an abusive asshole and he absolutely deserves it but think of all the
paperwork
involved. I’d
never
be done with it. We need to let the police deal
with him—send him back to jail.”

“I will not kill him on the condition that
you come quietly with me,” Six said. “I do not wish to make a scene when I take
you.”

“What? When you take me
where?”

“To Z4—Zeaga Four. For our Claiming
Period.”

“What? No! You said you weren’t claiming
me!”

“I said that before I saw the kind of
danger you were in. Am I right in thinking that you deal with this kind of scum
on a daily basis?” He nodded at Randy whom he was still holding casually over
his head, as though the two hundred and fifty pound man weighed no more than a
child.

“Randy Dungston
is
like a lot of
men I have to deal with,” Mei-Li admitted thinking of all the drunk and abusive
husbands, fathers, and disgruntled ex-boyfriends that littered the lives of the
children in her care. “But I can handle them—I can handle
myself.”

“That will be unnecessary. From now on I will
be taking care of you. This is natural and right—a Kindred’s instinct is to
protect the female he claims.”

“But you
can’t claim me!”
Panic
gripped her by the throat. “You can’t!”

“I am through arguing with you. You
will
come with me.”

“But…but my clients—the children on my
caseload! If I’m not here to watch over them—”

Six nodded. “I understand your concern for
them. Don’t worry, I will take care of this male before we go.” He shook Randy
like a bag of rags.

This sounded ominous to Mei-Li.

“I told you, you
can’t
kill him!
Even if he deserves it that’s not how we do things here. See, there’s something
called due process—”

Her words were cut off when Six dropped
Randy heavily to the porch. The big man’s head bounced against the wooden
boards and he groaned, his eyelids fluttering.

“Hey,” she protested. “You can’t just—”

Paying no attention to her, Six leaned
over the supine figure and took one of Randy’s arms in both his hands. Mei-Li
saw his metal hand flex and then with a calm, practiced gesture he snapped
Randy Dungston’s bone in two, right between the elbow and the shoulder.

“Oh my God!” Mei-Li gasped. At the same
time Randy woke up with a howl and started screaming.

“Ow! Holy God! Sweet Jesus—what?”

With a muffled crunching sound, Six broke
his other arm as well, this time between the elbow and the wrist.

“Fuck!” Dungston screamed. “Fuck, fuck,
fuck!”