Lore vs. The Summoning (12 page)

The vampire held my defiant gaze for what seemed like ages. In reality I suspected it was only about ten seconds. Then he gave the barest of nods. Another span passed before either of us spoke.
 

I was the one who broke the silence. "A shapeshifter named Chet was the ringleader of the group last night. His death was why I met with the Prime today. Chet was manipulating at least one person, Michael, the werewolf mailman for the Dungeon. Chet had Michael luring those women and bringing them in on the understanding that they wouldn't kill his captive sister if he did their bidding. Unfortunately I wasn't able to learn the identity of the real mastermind. That is all of the information I have for you."

"We appreciate all that you've done for us, Miss Denham," he said in a stiff voice. "And we'll understand if you wish to cease our agreement due to the danger involved in this matter."

My chin lifted a hint. "I didn't make any agreement with you, Mr. Bruce."

His lips quirked as if threatening to spread into a smile. "Of course you didn't, Miss Denham."

I shook my head because I didn't understand him at all. It should be refreshing to meet a man whose reactions I couldn't predict, but it wasn't. It made me feel insecure and unsafe.

"Right," I said flatly rather like the Alpha had done this morning. "Well, you have a good night...or day, or whatever it is."

"And you as well, Miss Denham. I'll see you out." He waved his arm toward the door.

"I think I can handle that much, thanks."

Aiden bowed his head. "Very well." And then he left me there in front of the painting of the Battle of the Boyne.

I shook my head, perplexed. But he had left me alone in his house. I could, in theory, wander the place. Maybe that was why he'd done it. Maybe he wanted me to know he hadn't kept a kidnap victim. I needed to get the hell out of there before I gave in to the wish to wander his home.

I stepped onto the stone porch and contemplated what to do now that I had no leads. I needed to talk to the werewolf Michael. And I was going to have to go through the Alpha to do it. It would be another wonderful night in Boston.

CHAPTER TEN

A pair of footsteps fell into place behind me after I'd hopped onto the sidewalk in front of the row house I claimed as home. The instinctual part of me knew those weren't benign steps. Someone was following me. I was so not in the mood for this.

I whirled around, half expecting to find vampires standing there, instead, I found two werewolves. Dominick held his wolf by the collar just inside the cone of light the streetlamp cast behind me cast. Their respective poses accounted for the slight dragging I'd heard on the part of one of them.

"We gotta talk," the Alpha announced.

Even though they were just the two people I needed to speak with, the fact that they were near my personal residence made me sigh in irritation. "Okay, I'll meet you someplace public."

Dominick quickly shook his head of messy hair. "We gotta talk in private."

"I suppose you think I'm going to let you..."

Rather than wait for me to finish speaking, Dominick marched Michael toward the row house's door.

"I miss the days of slobbering monsters," I muttered under my breath. "Oh wait, these guys probably slobber too."

"I don't slobber," Dominick said gruffly when I wedged beside them to get to the exterior doorknob.

I couldn't muster the effort to feel embarrassed that he'd heard me. The Alpha would get a nice big chunk of my mind for bringing his wolf to my home. I'd probably have to move now because the mailman would surely tell whomever he was working for where I resided. I liked my apartment. It was close to work. Maybe I'd make the Alpha pay some sort of restitution for this.

Restitution ideas were at the forefront of my thoughts as I unlocked my apartment door. The guys followed me inside. Dominick maneuvered Michael onto the soiled towels on my sofa. The wolf made a disgusted face at the blood and popped up only to be shoved down again by the firm hand on his shoulder.

"You can sit in her blood. She earned it cleanin' up after your mess," Dominick snarled at him in a very uncharitable voice.

The Alpha lifted his head once he was certain Michael wasn't going to stand. His mahogany eyes went up and down the length of me. I folded my arms in front of my chest beneath the obvious leering.

"You're lookin'...better, Laura," he said in a neutral tone. "How are those gunshot wounds?"

"They aren't bleeding anymore," I admitted quickly before jumping to the next, far more important matter. "What do you want?"

The Alpha blinked at me for a moment before responding. "Someone tried to set Michael on fire when I was talkin' to him earlier."

"Someone did set me on fire," Michael grumbled petulantly.

"They set your condo on fire," the Alpha corrected with a mere glance down.

I tapped my fingers against my arm impatiently. "And why is this my problem?"

It was Michael who answered with a snapping tone worthy of the sulkiest teenager. "They set my condo on fire because they know I sent you."

"And who is they?"

"I don't know."

My teeth set because the Alpha didn't budge. That meant Michael hadn't lied to me. I'd really hoped he knew something, anything that could help me track down who was the power behind the attacks, the kidnappings and the demon summoning.

"Michael needs a place to stay," the Alpha informed me while I silently lamented my lack of information, "And as punishment for shootin' him six times, you're gonna take him in."

"Oh, am I?" I drawled in a deceptively calm voice. Inside I silently raged against his presumption.

The Alpha continued, heedless to my anger, "And for his punishment for gettin' you into the mess with the kidnapped women, he's gonna be your live-in servant when he isn't on the clock at the post office."

"I like my hired help to have an IQ higher than their age." And Michael didn't look a day over thirty.

Michael shot a glare at me that told me he'd understood the insult.
 

I ignored it to fix his Alpha with a dark look. "You realize I'm only going to shoot him six more times if you force him on me like this." I shook my head in disgust. My hand went out toward the door. "And he's going to run off to whoever he's really working for to tell them exactly where I live. Thanks a load for putting my ass in more danger than it already was."

"Michael's sister called him last night," Dominick said instead of commenting on my threat. "She said she'd been in Cancun with a man she'd met last week and that she was sorry to worry him."

What the hell was going on? Had Michael been duped or had his sister really been kidnapped? I didn't know what story to believe now.

"So we went to see her." He swatted Michael across the head, I assumed to get him to talk.

Michael gave his Alpha a dirty look before he relayed the information he was most certainly meant to give. "She was thin, looked like she'd lost twenty pounds. And she looked exhausted. I checked the house out for luggage. There wasn't any. Her suitcases were still in storage. But she believed what she'd said." In other words, they weren't able to sense lies on her.

What if there was another explanation for this? I couldn't help but ask, "Did she say what the guy looked like? Or what his name was?"

"She said his name was Bruce."

I breathed in relief. "She must have been one of the ones I released last night." I bet I could guess which one she was. "A vampire helped the women I freed home. He must have altered their memory of the incident to keep them from blabbing to the cops about me."

Michael shot his feet, gestured angrily and stared daggers at my head. "You let a vampire near my sister?"

To which I shot back, "You let your sister get kidnapped?"

"Which vampire?" Dominick's voice lingered on the three syllables for far longer than was required.

There seemed no reason to hide the truth from them so I easily replied, "Aiden Bruce."

His eyebrows immediately jumped upward. "Bruce? That the Senate delegate from New York?"

I nodded reluctantly because I was uneasy with my association with the guy.

The Alpha's eyes crinkled suspiciously. "What was a senator doing helpin' you out?"

"You'd have to ask him," I answered with a shrug.

My flippant answer must have pissed the Alpha off because his expression darkened to match Michael's. "So you didn't ask him to mind rape those women to keep your hide squeaky clean?"

Mind rape, now that was a little on the crude side, wasn't it? But I suppose if I'd learned Aiden had messed with
my
memory, crude words would be the mildest of things I'd toss out. The way that Dominick glowered at me put me on the defensive. "I didn't ask him to do anything at all. I work alone. Remember? Speaking of..." My voice trailed off while my brain formed an idea. I focused on Michael, "If you were responsible for luring women in, who lured your sister?"

"Thanks to the vampire, we'll never know," Dominick snapped.

"He altered the memory. Maybe he can get it back," I said in a hopeful voice that wasn't at all like me. What I hadn't taken into account was that I'd have to see Aiden again so soon. I really needed to get a phone number for him so I could stop seeing him in person. Our discussions would be far less dangerous conducted over the phone.

Michael shook his head so violently that I thought it might fall off his neck. "I'm not lettin' a vampire near my sister again."

"If you don't, you risk her getting taken again," I pointed out sensibly.

"Not if she stays here too," Michael replied with a malicious smile.

That was the worst idea I'd ever heard. "And she'll be my what? Stylist?" I snorted in disgust. "I've got a better idea." I pointed at the wolf and then toward the door. "How about
you
stay with
her
, keep her safe? You can handle one little kidnapper, can't you?"

"Michael hasn't been a werewolf for long," Dominick reminded me.

Backed into a corner once more, I let them have it. "I don't care if he was infected yesterday! I'm not letting them stay here. I don't deserve any of this shit. Your wolf got in with the wrong crowd." I jabbed an angry finger at the guy. "As far as I'm concerned that is your problem, Alpha."

"Dominick," he snapped.

"I don't you know well enough to call you that," I snapped right back, daring him to get angry.

"You need information to track these people down for your investigation," the Alpha began. I didn't like the path he was going down because I knew I couldn't argue with it. "And we need to track them down to make sure Michael and his sister are safe. So as much as we all dislike it, this is how it has to be. We're gonna bring Michelle here and you're gonna convince the senator to join us."

There was no way in hell that I was inviting Aiden Bruce to my apartment. In the first place I wouldn't even know how to go about asking him. I'd already insulted him once tonight and he had to have more important things to do than bother with me. "Has it occurred to you that maybe the senator has -- I don't know -- Senate business that will keep him too busy to do your bidding?"

The Alpha had a ready answer for that. "The senator found time to wipe her memory and replace it with a new one. Either she had some incriminatin' evidence in her head he doesn't want us to know about or he really wanted to make sure you weren't brought up on murder charges. So you get him here so we can find out which one it is."

It had been in the back of my head but I hadn't wanted to think it. Aiden had mysteriously found me in Jamaican Plain. He could be the mastermind I was looking for or perhaps working for that person. For all I knew, he'd volunteered me to investigate this simply to appease the local rulers because he didn't expect me to find anything. And sure, he'd given me the gun that had killed the kidnappers, but he'd also tried to get me to stop investigating. Maybe I'd stumbled on something a little too close to home for him.

"I don't want him in my apartment," I admitted rather than argue. "I'll set it up for tomorrow night at the brownstone. You remember how to get there don't you, Mailman?"

"His name is Michael," the Alpha informed me coolly.

"Yeah, whatever." I gestured dismissively to shut him up before pointing my index finger at Michael. "He finds someplace else to sleep. I'm still healing from that blow-up last night and I can't sleep with another person in the house."

It was a quirk of mine that had been another reason Zeno and I had been on again off again for as long as we had. If I'd been able to sleep with him in the same apartment, hotel room or even at his place, we might still be together. It didn't help that I tended to get cranky when I didn't sleep.
 

Okay, maybe it was a little more serious than a
quirk
.

"You can't sleep with another person in the house?" Dominick repeated in disbelief.

This wasn't something I was going to talk about with them. I turned on my heel to head to the refrigerator. Hopefully they'd get the hint. I'd not had time to pick anything up at the store yet so there was nothing to look at inside it but random condiments and a half a jug of spoiled milk.

"What time tomorrow night?"

The Alpha hadn't pushed me to answer him nor was he arguing that his wolf should stay. It surprised me enough to turn around. They both watched me with irritated expressions but that was nothing new.

 
"I don't know," I answered. "I'll shoot for ten. That should give him time to wake up, ready and get there after the sun sets. I can call you when I know for sure if you want to leave your phone number." I gestured to the pad of yellow sticky notes next to my home phone.

"Yeah, okay."

And surprisingly that was all there was to the conversation. The Alpha scribbled his phone number on the top sticky note, stuck it to my phone's handset and then left me alone with a murmured parting greeting. I was cautiously optimistic about how that had gone. Anything greater than that and I knew I'd be risking a jinx.

"Hey, jerk!" Jim's teeth spread into a blinding white smile that popped against his darkly tanned skin.