“I’ve been shot with silver. The vampire is down and out. And I need to get the bullet out.”
“Rhoan’s two minutes away.”
“I’m on the roof above Tivoli’s.” I sucked in a breath, gathering courage, trying to ease the sick sensation of fear. “And I need this bullet out
now
.”
Already the numbness was beginning. I’d been shot too often with silver in the past, and as a result, I’d developed a hypersensitivity to its presence. For most wolves, there was at least some breathing space before the effects truly started to roll in. But for me, the minute silver lodged in my flesh, my body started reacting. I couldn’t afford to wait for help. The numbness, and the creeping death, might have already taken hold by then.
“Riley—” Jack said, concern suddenly overriding the anger.
“Boss, give me five. I need to remove this bullet.”
I took another deep breath, and released it slowly. My whole body was shaking with the knowledge of what I was about to do. What I had to do if I wanted to survive. I ripped the sodden jeans away from the wound, to get a clearer view. God, the wound seemed positively huge…
Probably just as well. It gave me plenty of room to maneuver.
Giving myself no more time to think, I stiffened two fingers then drove them into the wound’s opening. Deep into my own flesh. Heat flashed white-hot through my entire body and a scream tore through me, only to lodge somewhere in my throat. Sweat became a torrent pouring down my face and suddenly I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, could only feel. And it
hurt
. Oh God, how it hurt.
I hissed, panting for air, as I forced my fingers deeper, feeling past muscles and sinew, searching for the bullet lodged deep in my leg. Again heat flashed through me and black oblivion threatened. I fought the tears and the pain, trying to stay awake and aware. Then I touched the bullet, shifted it, and I screamed again. But somehow, I got my fingers around it. Somehow, I pulled it free of flesh. With the little strength I had left, I opened my hand and let the bullet roll away, then called to the wolf within. Shifting shape would at least stop the bleeding, even if it didn’t immediately heal the wound. With the bullet gone, the bleeding and fierce burning stopped. All that remained were nausea and weakness.
And then, finally, the utterly peaceful bliss of unconsciousness.
“R
iley?”
The voice invaded the black peace of unconsciousness, and recognition stirred.
Rhoan
. If he was here, I was safe from whoever else might come after me.
I mumbled something unintelligent then turned away from him, not ready to surface just yet. Not ready to face the pain and nausea that undoubtedly awaited.
“Riley? We’re taking you to the hospital. Even though the bleeding has stopped, you’ve lost too much blood.”
“No hospital,” I murmured, but the words didn’t seem to reach my lips.
“The medics are here now. I’ll come with you.”
“No hospital,” I said again, and wasn’t sure if the words hit my lips that time or not.
Because everything faded again.
W
hen I finally woke, it was to the smell of antiseptic. Never a pleasant aroma at the best of times, but when it’s accompanied by an underlying note of sickness and disease, it just became a gut-churning stench.
I hated hospitals. Always had. But it wasn’t just the smells that got to me—it was the death. The feeling that the dead awaited. Even when I couldn’t speak to the dead, the awareness of them in places like this had haunted me.
But thankfully, there was another scent overpowering those hospital smells, and it was all warm spice and leather. A scent I could concentrate on, depend on. A scent I’d recognize anywhere.
“Bastard,” I muttered, opening my eyes to look at my brother. There were dark rings under his eyes and his lips had that bloodless look vampires tended to get when they hadn’t been eating properly. He mightn’t be wholly vampire, but he sure as hell looked like one right now. Thankfully, he was never likely to smell like one—even on his sweatiest days. “You took me to the hospital. I told you not to.”
“You,” Rhoan said tartly, voice sounding a whole lot fresher than he looked, “were muttering all sorts of things, and not one of them made sense.”
“You could have guessed. You know I detest hospitals.”
“I also knew you needed one. There was blood everywhere.”
“Speaking of which—have you eaten recently?”
He gave me the look. Meaning he hadn’t. “Don’t you start lecturing me, or I’ll get the doctors to hold you here longer.”
“Bitch.” I pushed up into a sitting position, but the sudden movement made my head spin. So, obviously not fully over that whole blood-loss thing yet. “What happened to the vampire?”
“You shot him dead.”
“So? Dead is not always dead with a vampire. Didn’t Jack mention something about their consciousness taking longer to fade than their body?”
“Yep.” He shifted his feet from the bed and reached down into the bag on the floor. I smelled the chocolates before he pulled them out. “I brought you these. Thought you’d appreciate something decent to eat.”
“If you think offering me a chocolaty bribe will make me forgive you for dragging me into a hospital…you could be right.” I accepted the purple box with a grin, and quickly opened them up. The rich, chocolaty scent drifted up, and I sucked it in with a happy sigh. Not hazelnut coffee, but damn near as good. I picked out a strawberry cream and a caramel, then offered the box to Rhoan. “So did Jack actually get anything out of the shooter before his consciousness left?”
“He was a gun for hire. His calls came in on his business phone and part payment had to be deposited into his account before he’d start tracking down the target.”
“He doesn’t have caller ID or anything on his phone?”
“Nope. Guaranteed anonymity is part of the deal.”
I bit into the chocolate, felt the gooey strawberry filling spill into my mouth. Bliss itself. “Bank transfers aren’t anonymous.”
“No. But the money for this one came through an overseas account.”
“Which are harder to track down?”
“They are when they’re opened under false names.”
While I had no doubt that the Directorate, with all their resources, would eventually pin down the actual owners, it would take time. And if there was someone wanting to get rid of me, we didn’t exactly have a whole lot of time. “So how did he track me down?”
“Bug underneath your car.” He picked out several chocolates, then handed me back the box.
“Did he put it there?”
“Nope. He was just sent the receiver.”
“So someone got close enough to bug my car.” Which I suppose, considering I parked either in the street or in public parking lots most of the time, wasn’t a hard thing to do. “But I can’t think of one person that I’ve annoyed enough to go to the extreme of hiring a hit man.”
“What about Blake? Or Patrin?”
I shook my head. “Granted, they’re both angry that I didn’t manage to save Adrienne, but they still want me to track down her killer. If they
were
going to do anything, they wouldn’t do anything until after that happened.”
And personally, I didn’t think they’d do anything afterward. Patrin was a bully-boy like his father, but I’d proved that I could well and truly defend myself against him. And bully-boys tended to back away from situations they knew they couldn’t win.
“I’m afraid I tend to agree with you.”
The dry note in his voice had my eyebrows rising. “And you’ve changed your mind because…?”
“Because Patrin and I had a little chat after I saw you safely into the hospital.” He shrugged, not looking in the least bit repentant. Not that I really expected him to. He’d been at the receiving end of as many of Patrin’s taunts and blows as I had. “He swears he wouldn’t waste a bullet on useless half-breeds like us, let alone pay someone else to waste said bullets.”
That was the truth if ever I’d heard it. “What about Kye?”
He frowned. “What about him?”
“How many arms and legs did you break before you convinced him you weren’t intending to harm his boss?”
“None. He saw the family resemblance, apparently, and refused to intervene.” He hesitated. “I have to say, he’s fast for a werewolf.”
“He’s in the protection business, so he’d have to be.”
“Yeah, but this more than that. I was moving with vampire speed, and he tracked me. Had his gun on me all the time. That’s
not
normal.”
I shrugged and popped another chocolate into my mouth. This one was nutty. Nice. “No, but he’s the best for a reason. Maybe he has some sort of psychic gift that allows him to ‘feel’ where vamps and such are.”
“Possibly.” He sniffed and reached for another chocolate. “I intend to do a bit more investigation into his past. I’ve got a feeling we need to know more about him.”
“Ah, the family trait of clairvoyance is hitting you, too, huh?”
“No, it’s just my nose for trouble. And trust me, that one is.” He paused to munch on his chocolate. “So, if it wasn’t Patrin or Blake, then who?”
“I don’t know. As I said, the only case I’m dealing with now is Adrienne, and that’s sort of stalled.”
Stalled because I needed to talk to the owners of the club, and hadn’t gotten around to it yet. But now that Wilson was contained, I’d have the chance.
But I didn’t really think it could be them. I mean, why would they want me dead? They didn’t know I’d sprung their little blackmailing operation, and even if they
had
noticed me at the club, why would they think I was a danger? They couldn’t possibly know who I was, and if they had tried to do an identity search on me, it would have come up on the Directorate computers.
Yet that man at the club—the man who had smelled the same as Jared—had appeared to be hunting me after he’d almost sprung me in the camera room. I frowned, and asked, “In your experience, have you ever met two humans who smell the same?”
Rhoan raised an eyebrow. “That’s an odd question.”
“It’s an odd problem.” I explained what had happened at the club. “It was the same scent. The
exact
same scent. But he wasn’t Jared.”
“Easily explained if he was a shapeshifter.”
“Jared and the man in the club were both human, not Helki.”
“There’s no saying Helkis are the only ones who can shift into other human forms. I’m sure there’s other nonhumans out there totally capable of shapeshifting. We just don’t know about them yet.”
“The operative word there is nonhuman. We’re talking about humans.”
“There’s no reason why humans couldn’t shift, either.”
“They’re humans. Humans don’t do that sort of thing. It’s what makes them human, and us nonhuman.”
“No, that’s DNA. Humans are quite capable of all sorts of psychic skills.”
“Shifting isn’t a skill. It’s part of our DNA pattern.”
Rhoan popped another chocolate into his mouth, then said around it, “Were the body shapes similar?”
I hesitated, then nodded. “Why would that make a difference?”
“What if it’s not shifting as we know it? What if it’s more a gentle remolding? They can alter minor feature characteristics—nose, chin, ears, perhaps even hair—but major things like facial shape and eyes stay the same. It’d be enough to fool others, but it isn’t actually a full shift. Not in the way we shift, anyway.”
“Possible.” Jared and the man in the club certainly had the same color eyes. “If that’s true, then we perhaps have our first link between the club and the island.”
“But still no link between Adrienne, the other murdered women, and the club. After all, Jared wasn’t involved with any of the women, was he?”
“Well, if he’s some sort of face-shifter, how would we know? He could have appeared as anyone to them. Besides, Adrienne didn’t sleep with anyone up there.”
“Have you spoken to the partners or parents of the other women who have disappeared?” Rhoan asked. “Asked them if their daughters mentioned meeting anyone on the island?”
I shook my head. “Haven’t really had the time to follow that up.”
“I might do it, then. See if a clue shakes loose.”
“Ta.” I downed another chocolate, then asked, “So, how is Kellen holding up after last night?”
“I was wondering when you’d get around to asking.”
My eyebrows went up again at the censure in his voice. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“That means, you claim to care about the man, you say you want a long-term relationship with him, and yet he’s never first in your thoughts.” He tilted his head and studied me for a minute. “Tell me, if it had been Quinn with you last night, would you have taken so long to ask?”
If it had been Quinn with me, I wouldn’t have been alone on that roof and probably wouldn’t have been shot. But Quinn and I were history, no matter how much my heart ached at the thought of him.
But then, how much of what I felt for Quinn was real, and how much of it was vampire-implanted suggestion? I never would know, and in the end, that was a relationship killer more than anything else he had done.