Twice Dead (21 page)

Well there was one way.

I darted around Nathanial and jerked at the buttons on my shirt, but one arm hung useless at my side and my claws made it hard to operate the buttons. Degan’s skin split over his back. I was out of time. With a frustrated growl, I ripped the shirt, rending both layers I wore. Pain tore over me as I jerked the fabric off my body. I swallowed back a curse and stepped around Nathanial.

“It’s
my
blood.” I dropped the shredded shirts to the floor, revealing the jagged suture marks running the length of my arm. “My blood.”

Degan’s human bones were already reshaping into a wolf’s form, his muscles making wet sounds as his joints popped.

He’s too far gone.
His eyes were clear, though. He watched me, and I saw the alarm in the still mostly human-shaped face. Then his skin sealed back around his body.

His human skin.

I blinked in surprise. I wouldn’t have been able to reverse a shift that advanced. He was powerful, a lot more powerful than I would have guessed. But lethal energy still rolled off him, enough energy that he could have shifted again.

Immediately, if needed. I gulped, feeling very vulnerable, standing half-naked and injured in front of this fallen
Torin.

My instincts better be right.

Degan stalked across the room, his nose flaring as he moved into my personal space. Nathanial was suddenly there, between us. He threw only one punch, and the clanless shifter crashed into the wall. The thud shook the room, but Degan rolled to his feet. Stood. I wrapped a hand around Nathanial’s bicep before he could move forward to continue the attack.

“Don’t. He wasn’t going to hurt me.” Or at least, I didn’t think he’d planned to.

Degan rolled his shoulders back, but while his stance was defensive, he ducked his head. It was an apologetic, almost submissive gesture. “I should have announced my intentions. I wish only to analyze your mate’s scent,” he said, nodding at Nathanial.

“He’s not—” My teeth snapped shut before I finished the sentence. In Firth, a male shifter would never touch a mated female without her mate’s permission. Nathanial and I had shared blood, which had mingled our scents. My cheeks burned. With our merged scent—mating was a logical assumption. Denying it would damage my credibility.
Besides,
after what almost happened in this room…
I didn’t finish that thought. Dropping my gaze to the floor, I muttered, “It’s complicated. Nathanial?”

He was staring at me again, as if he was trying to figure out my thoughts but couldn’t follow them. I didn’t have a great track record for good decisions. I could only hope I was making one now. If my poison-tainted blood was what had drawn Degan here, there were only two explanations as to how I could have picked up the scent of the murder victim.

One was when I shared blood with Tatius. The other was Akane’s venom. I was betting on the latter. If we knew who killed the Collector’s vampire, we’d have one very powerful bargaining chip.

Slowly Nathanial nodded, but his eyes revealed how unhappy he was with the situation. He unbuttoned his shirt and slid out of it before holding it out to me. I accepted his help into the shirt, which hung halfway to my knees, and let him button it for me. I guessed Degan didn’t give a damn about the fact I’d been nearly nude—most shifters didn’t, but covering myself seemed to make Nathanial feel better, so I did.

Once Nathanial stepped back, Degan approached slowly, as if giving the vampire time to protest. It was a very polite action, very much something I’d expect of a well-bred shifter—not one I anticipated from a shifter severed from his clan, branded criminal and untrustworthy. Of course, maybe he was just trying to save his own skin.

He didn’t touch me when he crossed into my space, he simply leaned down, his nose within an inch of my skin. Air moved through my hair and across my throat as he inhaled. A shiver threatened to tremble up my spine. Part fear, as the scent of wolf enveloped me. Part not-fear, as his breath touched my throat.
Geez, a couple vampire bites and Tatius
has already programmed a response into me.
The thought pissed me off, but there was no denying the truth.

Degan stepped back, his features drawn in as much confused skepticism as when Nathanial had made an empty wall turn into a door. “Your blood is in that tub, but your confusing, convoluted scent isn’t the only one. And you have no hint of the tainted smell I’m tracking.”

That last bit was actually relieving.
Biana drew out all the
poison. Good to know.
But, as Degan backed away, his confusion became the prickly heat of his wolf. He was confused, and until he figured it out, we were enemies. I could see his reasoning, could even understand it.

“I was poisoned. By…” I wasn’t sure how to explain Akane.

“A foreign snake shifter. The blood is from drawing out the poison.”

“A snake?” He tilted his head back, his nostrils flaring.

He breathed in again, and his beast subsided, his energy sliding back under his skin. I nearly sighed with relief. He believed me. I mean, it was true—mostly—but I hadn’t been sure he’d believe me.

A smile cracked across his face again as he shook his head. “Nothing’s been sane since you came to my city.” Then, scooping his battered coat from the tile, he shrugged it on and headed for the door. “Come on. I’ll take you to the corpse I found.”

Chapter Sixteen

Wind tickled my face as Nathanial carried me soundlessly through the air. We trailed the clanless from just above streetlight level, wrapped in the tightest illusion Nathanial could command. Being on the street increased the danger of being caught, but Tatius was the only Haven vampire strong enough to break Nathanial’s illusion. With any luck, he was still preoccupied with the Collector. But he might not be. He might be out searching. It was a chance we had to take.

Nathanial agreed with me, knowing more about the decapitated body could help us.

So far, there was a human body with a missing head, and a vampire head with a missing body. We were either about to see the enforcer’s body, or there had been another murder.

The towering buildings rushed by on either side of us and made the flight more nerve racking than normal—or maybe that was because I could only cling to Nathanial with one arm. Nathanial had fashioned a makeshift brace for my butchered arm and buttoned a borrowed coat over me. The nervousness could also have something to do with being wrapped in the warm circle of Nathanial’s arms again, but Nathanial was completely focused on his illusion and on trailing Degan.

If his thumb didn’t occasionally trace a line along my spine, I’d have thought he’d forgotten I was even pressed up against him. There was no hint of the heat that had been between us earlier. I hated the twinge of disappointment I felt at that fact.

Nathanial’s secret home was close to Sydney Park, but Degan’s path led us to a busier, more nightlife-oriented area of town. I tensed as we flew past Death’s Angel, but no legion of vampires burst through the door determined to drag us back. Soon its black lights faded behind us. We were only three streets from the club when Degan ducked into an alley and stopped.

The clanless shifter hadn’t looked behind him for the entire trip—Nathanial had told him he wouldn’t be able to see us following—but now his gaze roved the street, trying to find us.

Nathanial landed behind Degan. Snow crunched under my bare feet as Nathanial lowered me to the ground, and Degan spun around, energy leaking into the night. His eyes narrowed, but he only nodded in greeting, not voicing the agitation I could feel swirling around him. I didn’t hold it against him—predators get cranky when you startle them.

“This way,” he said, moving beside the boarded windows of a closed nightclub.

A hint of acrid smoke clung to the building, offering a clue as to why it looked condemned, while the rest of the area hosted a thriving nightlife. Degan shoved his fingers under a large piece of plywood and pulled it aside easily. Too easy, even for someone with a shifter’s strength.
Clearly this has
been used before.
The question was whether Degan had made the makeshift entrance or if he’d just stumbled over it.

He disappeared into the dark opening, and I moved to follow, but Nathanial held up a hand, stalling me.

“In case this is a trick,” he whispered. Then slipped around the crooked slab of wood.

I gave Nathanial a five-second head start—it had taken him mere seconds to subdue Degan earlier—then I pulled the wood aside with my good hand and slid inside.

The hint of smoke had merely tainted the alley, but inside the damaged building it threatened to overwhelm my senses.

I wrinkled my nose.

Come on. Sift past the fire stink.

I drew another breath. Under the acrid smell of burnt wood I caught dried blood and the sour scent of something foreign.

A foreign scent that did smell a hell of a lot like the blood Biana had drained from me.

My vampire eyes adjusted immediately to the inky darkness of the inside of the club, but besides Degan and Nathanial, there wasn’t much to see. Charred wood, barely recognizable as tables and chairs, littered the large room. A darkened, hulking mass took up half the space, and I guessed it had been a bar at one time. Support beams, fallen from the floor above, broke the space as if a designer had decided to decorate with a post-apocalyptic theme. A few bottom steps remained from a wooden staircase, but the fire had consumed the rest.

I walked to the center of the room and turned a full circle.

“No body.” No blood pool either.

Degan pointed up, and I glanced at the dark, half-fallen ceiling.
Okay. Second floor.
But the stairs were burned to a crisp. Nathanial could fly us up, but unless Degan had climbed up via one of the fallen support beams, I didn’t see how he’d found the body in the first place.

The clanless stayed by the entrance, watching me.
What,
am I supposed to figure it out myself?
I glanced at Nathanial.

He looked up, and then he was in the air. Degan started, his hand reaching for something in his pocket. He stared at Nathanial, who hung in midair between the two floors. Degan had known, in theory, that Nathanial could fly, but accepting something as possible and seeing the proof were very different things. I felt for him; we were throwing a lot at him, and all and all, he was taking it well.

“The body is up there,” Nathanial said, landing beside me.

He reached out, like he would pick me up.

I stepped back. “I’ll find my own way.” After all, if Degan could do it, so could I. Besides, unless the victim—or possibly the killer—could fly, they had to have found an alternate route upstairs as well.

I traced my steps back to the boarded window and knelt.

Charred bits of wood and ash covered the floor, clearly marking the outline of footprints. Lots of footprints. The boxy, dress-shoe prints were Nathanial’s and stopped right inside the entrance. The barefoot tracks were mine. There were also three sneaker impressions—one that left zigzagged impressions in the ash, one with diamond-shaped impressions, and one that was missing large sections of the impression, like the sneakers were worn. Occasionally I caught sight of another track, this one smaller, with a pointed-toe, but the person with the diamond-treaded sneakers had walked through those smaller prints, obscuring them.

Two of the sneaker impressions, and the small, pointedtoe impression, all walked a direct path like they knew where they were going. The person leaving the zigzagged sneaker marks had wandered the room, the tracks crossing themselves at times. I glanced at Degan.

“Let me see the sole of your shoes.”

He frowned, but lifted his feet. His shoes were old, the rubber missing from the sole in some places.
So he’s the
worn impression.
He’d followed the direct route. I traced his steps.

The prints lead into a tiny alcove I hadn’t noticed earlier. A cast-iron spiral staircase hugged the corner, hidden from view if you weren’t standing in the alcove.
Well, that answers the
‘how to get upstairs’ question.

I glanced back at Degan. “You walked straight to this stairwell. How did you know it was here?”

“Same way you did. Tracks.”

Fair enough.
We’d both been raised in Firth, and, at least in my clan, tracking was taught as soon as we could crawl. I doubted whichever clan Degan had been thrust out of had been much different.

I took the stairs one at the time, using my good hand to support me. Nathanial glided up through the wreckage, settling somewhere in the darkness of the second floor. Once I reached the floor myself, it was easy to spot him. He wasn’t far from me, and neither was the nude body from the photo.

Nathanial knelt over the headless corpse—the second one in as many days. It was face down, that is, if it had still had a face. He lifted the man’s hand, examining it briefly before lowering it back in the dried blood surrounding the body.

Degan followed me up the stairs but stood off to one side, watching silently. The floor felt precarious under me, the fireweakened wood threatening to crumble under our steps, but it had held the vampire and his killer, surely it would hold us.

Nathanial stood as I approached. “What do you smell?”

I tilted my head back. The scent of rotting blood was stronger on this floor, but it couldn’t contend with the scent of smoke that coated the back of my throat. Under that, though, was another scent. Something sour and
wrong.

I knelt beside the body, leaning close, and drew in a slow breath. “Degan’s right. The blood Biana drained from me and this body both smell tainted.”

Degan shook his head. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. The same handkerchief he’d used to collect a scent sample of my blood from the bathtub. He sniffed it. Then he knelt by the blood pool and compared the scents. “Not completely the same.” He held out the stained cloth to me.