Chaos Bites (2 page)

“There’s someone here.”

In the next instant I scrambled toward consciousness, and as I did the sound of his voice, the weight of his hand, and the warmth of his body faded.

“Someone or some
thing
?” I asked.

“Both,” he answered, and then he was gone.

My eyes snapped open, my hand already reaching for the silver knife beneath my pillow.

The world wasn’t what it seemed. Beneath the facades of so many people lurked half demons bent on our destruction. They’re known as the Nephilim, the offspring of the fallen angels, or Grigori, and the humans.

They’ve been here since the beginning, glimpsed more often in times past when wolf men and women of smoke were commonplace and gave rise to the legends we now see on the screen at the multiplex. Unless you’re me, and then they show up in your apartment.

My fingers wrapped around the hilt of the knife even as I stilled, waiting for the slight buzz that signaled
evil creepy thing
to wash over me. But it didn’t.

I sat on the edge of the mattress, eyes narrowing, ears straining, then I took a deep breath, and my skin prickled. The bed smelled of Sawyer—snow on the mountain, leaves on the wind, fire and smoke and heat.

“Dream my ass,” I muttered.

Downstairs, outside, came a soft thud then the scrape of something hard against the pavement. A shoe? A toe? A claw?

As I crossed the room, I could have sworn fur brushed my thigh. I glanced down but saw only the flutter of the loose cotton shorts I’d worn to bed along with a worn and faded Milwaukee Brewers T-shirt.

An odd cry drew me to the window, where I kept to the side and out of sight. New moon and the sky was dark, the stars dim this close to the city. The single streetlight in Friedenberg revealed nothing but empty sidewalks and dark storefronts. Which meant nothing. Nephilim rarely used the front door. They didn’t have to.

Uneasy, I glanced up—only shadows on the rooftops. Of course those shadows might become anything.

“Psst. Kid.”

I kicked the cot shoved against the wall in the corner. My apartment was an efficiency located above a knickknack shop. I owned the building, rented out the first floor, and was considering renting out the second. I rarely came to town these days. The only reason I was here now was that I’d promised my best friend I’d attend her daughter’s ninth birthday party. I owed Megan so much, the least I could do was show up when she begged me to.

“Luther!” I nudged the makeshift bed again. I didn’t want to touch him if I didn’t have to.

I’d been psychometric since birth, I assumed, since I couldn’t remember a time that I wasn’t able to touch people and see where they’d been, what they’d done. In the case of the Nephilim, I could see what they truly were. Or at least I could until recently. Now I had Luther for that.

“Wha—? Huh?” Luther rubbed at his face. His kinky golden-brown hair stuck out from his smooth brown skin even more than usual.

“Getting any bad-guy vibes?” I gave the boy credit; he woke right up.

“No,” he said slowly, head tilted, hazel eyes narrowed.

“You sleep pretty deep.” From what I heard, most kids did, though Luther would say he was no longer a kid but a man.

He swore he was eighteen, but I had my doubts. Tall and gangly, Luther had huge feet and hands. Many Nephilim had believed Luther’s awkward appearance meant he was slow and clumsy. However, Luther moved as quickly and gracefully as the lion he could become.

Luther was a breed—the offspring of a Nephilim and a human. Being part demon gave him supernatural powers. Being less demon than human meant he could choose to fight on the side of good. A lot of breeds did.

“I’d hear Ruthie if she had somethin’ to say. Wouldn’t matter if I was sleeping or not.”

Ruthie Kane, my foster mother, had been the former leader of the light. Now I was. In the beginning, she’d spoken to me on the wind, in dreams, or in visions, to let me know what flavor of evil lay behind a Nephilim’s human face. Now she spoke through Luther. I had demon issues.

“There’s something out there,” I said.

Luther’s silver knife appeared in his hand as quickly as mine had. Silver kills most shifters, and if it doesn’t, the metal at least slows them down.

“Ruthie talking to you again?” Luther was already making his way toward the door that led to the back stairs.

“No.” I paused to retrieve both my gun and Luther’s from the nightstand—if a silver knife works well, a silver bullet works even better—then I hurried to catch up.

We tossed our knives on the kitchen table. The kid reached for the door, but I shouldered in front of him. Luther was a rookie.

Sure, I’d been on the job less than four months, but I was the leader, which meant I got to go through the door first.

In the past a seer—someone with the psychic ability to recognize a Nephilim in human form—worked with several DKs, or demon killers. However, that arrangement had gone to hell when the Nephilim infiltrated the federation and wiped out three-quarters of the group. Now the remaining members pretty much did whatever they could. Seers became DKs, DKs became seers, and everyone killed anything that got in their way.

“If Ruthie still isn’t talking, then how do you know something’s out there?” Luther asked reasonably.

I wasn’t going to tell him that I’d had a dream visit from the dead. Not that such news would be a shock. Luther got visits from the dead every damn day. I just didn’t want to share right now. Right now I wanted to know what was out there, and then I wanted to kill it.

I crept down the stairs, silent on bare feet. Luther was even quieter. He’d been born part lion. He couldn’t help it.

A door led into the parking lot behind the building. I opened it but didn’t step out. Instead I listened; Luther sniffed the air, then our eyes met and together we nodded. Empty as far as we could tell.

“Don’t shoot anyone I’ll have to dispose of later,” I cautioned, a variation on
Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes
or, in federation-speak,
Don’t kill a human by mistake
.

Nephilim disintegrated into ashes when executed correctly, eliminating impossible-to-answer questions and the annoying necessity of bloody body removal. People were another story.

Luther’s only answer to my caution was a typical teenage sneer combined with an irritated eye roll. I didn’t have to touch him to know his thoughts.

As if.

We stepped outside. No one shot us, not that a bullet would do much damage. Supernatural creatures, even those like Luther and me—more human than not—healed pretty much anything but the one thing common only to them. Which meant the killer had to know what that single thing was.

I indicated with a tilt of my chin that Luther should go around the building to the left, while I moved to the right. We’d meet back here then check out the dark gully at the far end of the lot where the Milwaukee River gurgled merrily.

My gaze shifted in that direction. There could be something hiding there—several somethings. Although the lack of a warning from Ruthie indicated that whatever I’d heard had probably been human.

Not that a human couldn’t be a huge pain in the ass. They usually were. And anyone sneaking around in the dark just had to be.

As I slid along the side of the building, back to the wall, I caught movement near the river and spun in that direction, gun outstretched. For an instant I could have sworn something slunk there, low to the ground, a black, four-legged . . .

I blinked, and the shadow was just a shadow, perhaps a log with four branches, perhaps the reflection of a distant streetlight off the river. There were also foxes in Friedenberg, a few coyotes, and dogs galore. But that had looked like a wolf.

“Sawyer?” I whispered. My only answer was the high-pitched keening of the wind.

I lifted my face, waiting for the air to cool my skin. Instead humid heat pressed against me; there wasn’t even a hint of a breeze. Not the wind then, but definitely a wail.

Shit. Luther.

I sprinted toward the front of the building. Every instinct I had shrieked for me to skid around the corner gun blazing, but charging into the open was a good way to get my head blown off. I didn’t think even that would kill me, but it would take a helluva long time to heal. By then Luther could be dead.

There was also the added concern of a possible pregnancy. I didn’t
want
to be pregnant, could think of little I wanted less than that, except maybe slow, torturous death by Nephilim, but what was, was. If I carried Sawyer’s child, he, she, or it was all that was left of his magic, beyond what he’d given to me. I had to protect his gift. I’d promised.

Fighting the adrenaline, I peeked around the edge of the building. Four am on a Saturday and Main Street was deserted. Friedenberg boasted its share of taverns—this was Wisconsin, after all—but they’d closed on time, and everyone had skittered home.

Not a sign of Luther. Hell.

“Kid?” I didn’t want to shout, but pretty soon I would have to.

I hurried along the front of the knickknack shop, so intent on the next corner I nearly missed what rested in the shrouded alcove of the doorway. I’d already scooted past when what I’d seen registered. I stopped and took several steps in retreat.

On the landing sat a blanket-shrouded basket. Despite the lack of light in the alcove, and the lack of color to the blanket—either black or navy blue—I still detected movement beneath.

The back of my neck prickled, and I had to fight not to slap at an imaginary mosquito. I dared not touch that area unless I meant to. Sawyer wasn’t the only one with tattoos, nor the ability to use them.

Had someone brought me a basket of poisonous snakes, tarantulas, or Gila monsters? Maybe something new like a land shark, a water-free jellyfish, a teenie-tiny vampire. Believe me, I’d seen stranger things.

The wail I’d heard before came again—from the basket. I leaned over, caught the end of the coverlet with the barrel of my Glock, and lifted. What I saw inside made my heart beat faster than any vampire ever had. I let the blanket fall into place and nearly tripped over my own feet in my haste to back away.

“Fan-damn-tastic,” I muttered.

Someone had left me a baby.

CHAPTER 2

The child started to cry in earnest; the sound could no longer be mistaken for the wind. Pretty soon someone was going to come outside and ask why I was creeping around with a gun. They’d also want to know why there was a baby in a basket on my front porch. I kind of wanted to know that myself.

I inched closer, yanked the blanket off with my hand this time. The kid blinked. Long dark lashes framed light eyes, the exact color indeterminate in the night. The round face darkened as the baby drew a deep breath and really let loose.

“Pick her up.”

I started so violently, I almost dropped the gun. Luther carefully removed the weapon from my hand.

“Her?” I asked, and he shrugged.

“Looks like a her, doesn’t it?”

The child wore only a disposable diaper, but it was pink. I guess that should have been my first clue.

“Pick her up, Liz, before my head explodes.”

“Why don’t you pick her up?” I tried to retrieve the guns, but Luther held them above his head. Though I was tall at five-ten, I still couldn’t reach them. By the time he finished growing, Luther would rival LeBron in size.

“Not a chance,” he said.

“Rats,” I muttered.

Fuck,
I thought.

Leaning over the basket, I slid my hands under the baby. She was warm and wiggly, kind of like a puppy without the fur. Maybe ten pounds, a couple of feet long, I had no clue how old she might be, but she looked young—little, helpless, fragile. She scared the shit out of me.

As I lifted, she continued to cry. I couldn’t blame her. I’d been dumped on a doorstep, too. If I’d known what was going to happen to me in the next decade, I’d have screamed my head off. Hell, maybe I had.

“Any note?” I asked.

Luther peered into the depths of the basket. “Nope.”

“Fabulous.” I was having a hard time with the kid, who continued to squirm as if she
wanted
me to drop her.

“Sheesh,” Luther said. “Watch her head.”

He transferred both guns to a single huge paw before grabbing my hand and showing me how to cup her skull with my fingers while pressing my palm against her neck.

“Put her against your shoulder.” He pantomimed the movement then reached over and patted her back. “Sometimes they like that.”

The baby hiccuped—once, twice—took a deep breath, and I tensed, waiting for her to blow out my eardrum with the next wail. Instead she wiggled her butt and cuddled closer, then began to suck on my T-shirt.

“How do you know so much about babies?” I asked.

“I
have
held one before. What’s your excuse?”

“She’s my first.”

“You’ve never held a baby?” Luther’s voice was as incredulous as his face. “How’d you manage that?”

“Wasn’t easy,” I muttered.

Sure I’d lived in a group home, but Ruthie hadn’t taken in many babies. They required too much care, and her specialty was troubled preteens. Most people thought Ruthie preferred adolescents because she was good with them, and she was. But in truth, the supernatural talents of many breeds appeared or strengthened at puberty.

Ruthie ran that group home not so much for the benefit of those she took in as for the benefit of the federation. She was searching for recruits. That countless children were saved from life on the streets or in an unpleasant foster home because of her was a happy accident, nothing more.

“You don’t have any friends with kids?” Luther pressed.

I had one friend, Megan, and she had three kids. But I’d been so uncomfortable around them as babies that she hadn’t allowed me to touch them—afraid, I was sure, that I’d drop them on their heads.

“We should go inside,” I said, ignoring Luther’s question. “Grab the basket.”

After setting the guns at the bottom, he picked up the carrier, revealing a pink blanket on the step. Luther lifted the material, and it tumbled downward. Tiny kittens gamboled across the flannel.