Touch of Darkness (25 page)

It was morning, about ten o’clock judging from the height of the sun from the horizon. I ran through a deserted park, the snow crisp beneath my pads as my paws touched down. I could feel the grass beneath the thin layer of powder-dry snow, dormant, waiting for spring. My breath misted the air, but I wasn’t cold. In fact, it felt good. In the distance the Canada geese on the lake grew restive, flapping their wings and honking a warning. My mouth watered at the thought of hot blood and raw meat, but I fought down the hunger. There was no time for that. I needed to get back to the apartment and change before going to the convention center.

Even in this small pocket of wilderness I could taste the car exhaust in the air. Denver was known for its “brown cloud” in the winter and today was no exception. Running through the bare trees, I could hear the cars whizzing by on the highway I couldn’t see. An eight foot privacy fence had been placed between the park and the highway, but that was on the far side of the lake, by the access road where I’d left the car. It wasn’t visible from here.

Stupid human. Her own fault really. The first lesson is always to eliminate anyone who may be a threat. Caesar forgave his enemies, and died with a knife in his back.

There was no warning; just sudden, excruciating pain as a section of my hindquarters literally exploded outward in a mess of blood and bone. I went down in a graceless heap. Only then did the sound of a rifle cut the winter air; a rifle, and howls of challenge. Four—

no, six—voices, converging from different directions. I couldn’t smell them yet over the scent of meat and blood, but I heard them, and I knew they were coming for me. I wasn’t whimpering in pain because I couldn’t feel anything below my waist. That was bad. Very bad. Because if I couldn’t feel, I couldn’t move, wouldn’t be able to fight. Already I could feel my strength flowing away with my blood on the snow.

The first of them appeared in silhouette at the crest of the hill. He was a huge, brindled male. He posed there, deliberately letting me catch his scent.

It was the scent of a vampire.

“Katie, wake up!” Bryan was standing by the edge of the bed, shaking me hard. I came to myself with a soft gasp, as if I were relearning how to breathe. It had been so real. Too real for a dream. I wasn’t that good at telling dreams from visions but sometimes, like now, it was obvious.

I clung to Bryan’s arm, trying to wrench myself out of the psychic and firmly into reality. I didn’t want to lose the gist of the vision, I knew it was too important to let go of it, but I sure as hell didn’t want to get sucked back down for the finale. They say that if you die in your dreams you can die in real life. I so didn’t want to find out if that particular belief was or wasn’t true.

“Are you okay?” He looked down at me with worried eyes. The black polo shirt he wore as part of his work uniform gaped away from his neck just a little, revealing the bandage that covered one of the many healing puncture wounds that still decorated his body. I shuddered, remembering how close he’d come to dying just a few short days ago.

“Katie, answer me. You’re really starting to scare me.”

“I’ll be fine.” The whispered words came out hoarse, barely audible. I worked to steady my breathing. Inhale, exhale. Easy. So why was I having such a hard time with it?

“Liar.” But he smiled. I’d relaxed my deathgrip on his arm, so he pulled away enough to sit down on the edge of the bed. “Was it a vision?”

“Yeah.”

“What about?”

“Blood, death, Caesar.”

“Caesar?” His eyebrows rose high enough to disappear beneath the rumpled shock of damp blond hair he hadn’t had time to comb out yet.

“It’s a long story.” My voice sounded normal. In fact, I was getting my act back together. The vision wasn’t real. Or at least it wasn’t real right now. In the reality of the moment I was me, I was safe, whole, and in desperate need of the bathroom. My brother had less than fifteen minutes to get ready for work. Even if the vision represented today—it had been 10:00 A.M. Denver time. I had a couple of hours. I could pee, get myself some coffee, and let my brother get on with his day before I tried to process the details of what I’d seen and figure out what the hell to do with the information.

“You’d better get moving or you’re going to be late,” I warned him.

“I can stay if you need me.” He was so serious, even solicitous. I didn’t mean to peek into his mind, but I caught a stray glimpse anyway. He was worried that staying here, after what happened, was causing me problems.

“Nah. Go. I’ll be fine.” I shoved him off of the bed with both hands so I could climb from beneath the covers.

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.” I rose to my feet, grateful that I was decently covered in a baggy old pair of gray sweatpants and matching tee-shirt. Since I’ve been living with Tom I’ve spent most nights sleeping in lingerie or the nude. He prefers it. But since Bryan had decided to stay over, I’d gone for modesty. I was glad now. I could run down the hall to the bathroom without flashing him.

“All right. I’ll go. But call if you need me.” He was talking to me through the closed bathroom door.

“I will.”

I don’t think he believed me, but he left anyway.

I finished my business and washed my hands. I started a bath running. Considering the size of the tub, it was probably going to take a while to fill. That was fine with me. I wanted to get some coffee started. Bryan, God love him, had given me a house-warming present last night—a coffeemaker. Joe and Mary’s contribution had been a set of dishes for eight. Ruby provided pots and pans. It had all been part of the stuff Joe and Bryan had brought over last night. The luggage was in the bedroom. Everything else was in the garage, waiting for me to unpack. Thinking about it made me smile. I have friends. The kind of friends who come through for you in a pinch. For a long time after Amanda betrayed me with Dylan I hadn’t trusted anyone enough to let them close. I mean, when your fiancé cheats with your best friend it kind of makes you doubt your taste in relationships. Oh, Michael had been around, but he’d been around forever. Peg had broken through, but other than that, I really hadn’t let myself go. But over the past couple of years things had changed. I’d started socializing again. Loving Tom had given me the courage to let others into my life as well, people like Brooks, Mary, Dusty and Rob, even Ruby. And despite Dylan’s threats, I didn’t think they were going anywhere. For one thing most of them are just too damned stubborn. They’ve seen me through “battle conditions” before. They wouldn’t abandon me. As to whether he could kill them—well, most all of them are pretty damned tough, particularly when they’re on their guard. I’d warn them all, of course. But I doubted they’d back down, or change much of how they handled their lives. I wandered into the kitchen and retrieved the coffee can from the pantry. It was only when I’d opened the bin to the coffeemaker that I realized why Bryan hadn’t started a pot brewing. No filters. Crap. It was still dark outside, dammit. I needed caffeine, and I wanted it steaming hot in my very own kitchen. There had to be something I could use. Think, Reilly. Think.

I glanced around. My eyes lit up at the sight of salvation. Paper towels. Perfect. Well, not perfect, but good enough, by God. I might get a few grounds in my cup, but I’m tough. I can handle it.

Just the aroma of the ground coffee made me feel more alert. Pavlovian probably, but who cares? I sure didn’t. I set up the machine to make a full six cups, hit the button, and went back to the bedroom to pick out clothes for the day. I started rifling through the dressier clothes from the suitcase, mainly because I expected to be meeting with the insurance adjuster and running other important errands. Theoretically it should not make a damned bit of difference how you’re dressed under these kinds of circumstances, but the fact is that you are judged by your appearance every time you step out the door. Women are judged more harshly than men, too, or at least differently. I needed to look businesslike, competent, but nonthreatening enough that nobody would be defensive right out of the box. That meant no leather, which was really okay since my most recent purchases were still in the evidence locker at the police station in Beaver Falls. The brown suit Joe had bought me was still dirty and wrinkled, so that was out. I hated the idea of wearing my good coral suit, but it was still clean and reasonably unwrinkled. I hadn’t wound up using it on the Vegas trip. Of course it didn’t offer much opportunity for weapons concealment—once I got weapons—which I really needed to do. Sooner rather than later.

So coral it was, with a cream colored silk blouse and, ugh, hose and the matching heels. Here’s hoping I didn’t have to do any running, or even much walking.

I carried the clothes into the bathroom with me and hung them up by hooking the hanger necks over the handle of the linen cabinet. If I was lucky the steam would get rid of the last of the wrinkles. If not, too bad. I didn’t have an iron yet.

The tub was just about ready, and the temperature was perfect, hot enough to relax me but not so toasty as to leave me parboiled. I had my coffee. There was only one more thing I needed before I could strip and sink gratefully into my bath. The cell phone. Because I knew that just as soon as I was naked, wet, and relaxed the damned thing would ring. Not psychic premonition. Just experience. Lots and lots of past experience.

True to form, I had just started shampooing when it rang. I ducked underwater long enough to rinse out the worst of the bubbles before grabbing the phone from off of the toilet lid. “Good morning, gorgeous,” I sang. It was Tom. Had to be. Only he would have the courage to call me this early in the morning.

“Good morning yourself. How was your first night in the house?”

“It would’ve been better with you here,” I answered forthrightly. “But Blank and I managed. Bryan stayed over. He had an early shift at work.”

“Sounds like you didn’t miss me at all.”

“Oh, I missed you.” I made my voice a sexy purr. “As soon as you get back home I’ll prove it.”

“Promises, promises,” he teased.

“Are you alone? Would you like a little phone sex?” I made the offer. I’m a little shy, and still somewhat awkward at it, but I discovered that playing along sometimes keeps things very, very hot between the two of us. I guess it’s all that anticipation. I might blush purple and squirm with embarrassment at some of the things he says, but it gets under my skin. And I just can’t stop thinking about it. Apparently neither can he, because the times that we’ve talked dirty he’s come back from his shift rarin’ to go.

“No to the first, which means no to the second.”

“Aw, damn.” I was actually disappointed.

He laughed, and it was as thick and rich as chocolate. “I love you, Katie.”

“I love you too.”

“So, is there any news?” he asked.

I had to think for a minute. An awful lot had happened in a really short period of time. I wasn’t even sure where to begin. I did know one thing for a fact. I was not going to tell him about Janine stalking me, Dylan or the threats he’d made, or even the vision of the werewolf I’d had this morning. Those bits of bad news were all going to wait until he was off duty. His job regularly puts him in life-and-death situations. I so didn’t want him going into one of them distracted. The disasters could wait. Good news, however, was fair game. I could share it all in good conscience and did. I started with the insurance check, then moved on to the luggage being returned, our stuff being moved for us by my brothers, and Joe’s second interview.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Damn, he’s a suspicious man.

“Katie—” his voice carried a very real warning. Tom has a thing about my keeping secrets from him. He thinks I shut him out of the dangerous parts of my life. I don’t, not anymore. I learned my lesson after I almost lost him. But timing is everything and now was so not the time to tell him some of this stuff.

“All right, there are some things that aren’t great news too, but they can wait until you’re off shift.”

“I don’t like that.”

“Let’s just say you’d better come home prepared for company.”

“Why?”

“Elaine Johnston is going to be staying with us, at least until the end of the Conclave.” It was actually the least of the bad news, but I was crossing my fingers that it would be enough to sidetrack him from asking more questions.

“Oh, fucking goodie.”

I let out a harsh bark of laughter. I couldn’t help it. He’d summed up my feelings on the matter to absolute perfection. “That’s kind of how I felt.”

“This has something to do with Janine, doesn’t it?”

Damn. There are times when I really wish he wasn’t as bright as he is good looking. This was definitely one of them. Thinking on my feet, I managed to answer his question with one of my own. Oddly enough, I even wanted the answer. It might even be important.

“Tom, did Janine follow you out here from Vegas before or after all the publicity with Samantha?” Tom had been around for my original confrontation with Monica Mica, in fact it was when we’d first started dating. But while there’d been plenty of publicity at the time, none of it had mentioned him. He’d managed to stay under the radar quite a lot longer than I had.

“Before. It’s one of the reasons the pack was pushing me to dump you. She was agitating even then.”

“But how did she find you? I mean, you knew she was unstable. I assume you didn’t just leave a forwarding address.”

There was a long, intense silence. When he answered it was very quietly. “No. I didn’t. And no one I know would’ve told her.”

“Would someone in the Denver pack—” He interrupted me before I could finish the sentence.

“Not a chance. They all knew it had ended badly, and she has a reputation for being … difficult. Nobody wanted that kind of a diplomatic mess.”

“So how’d she find out?”

“That’s a damned good question. I’ve chewed on that for a long time.”

I knew he’d be thinking about it for the next two days, too. It was the kind of puzzle that would worry at your mind when there was nothing else to occupy you. But I knew he’d be able to set it aside to do his duty.