Night Blade (17 page)

That
was what really cleared the cobwebs from my brain. The second I moved, pain flooded me. Pain from
everywhere
. Pain in my side. Pain in my neck. I groaned and reached up, trying to remember why my neck was hurting. I remembered the mess with my side—you don’t forget when a werewolf takes a chunk out of you, trying to get to your spleen, your heart. Whatever his intended snack had been.

But at first, I didn’t remember my neck—
oh, wait
.

Damon pressed a kiss to my shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

I jabbed my elbow into his gut. Since he was built like a tank, all it did was hurt my arm, but I felt better. “I feel like somebody bit a chunk out of my side and like a Neanderthal decided to mark his territory by chewing up my neck.” I cracked open one eye to glare at him.

There was a large clock dominating the wall opposite us. He had pretty keen eyesight, so I had to assume he just liked the look of it. It was ornate, kind of old world style and I figured it was pretty. But I’d rather not know how early it was. I just wanted to sleep.

The phone rang again. Once. Only once. Then it went silent. Hadn’t it just done that?

“Why in the hell is it doing that?”

“They want my attention,” Damon said. His hand rested on my hip. “They can have it in a minute.”

I sat up, taking my time with it because I expected to hurt like a bitch…damn, I wasn’t wrong about that. There wasn’t a part of me that
didn’t
hurt and that wasn’t good. I might not be super tough shifter stock, able to heal massive holes in my body in the blink of an eye, but after a night of rest, I should have felt better than this.

The fact that I didn’t told me one brutal fact: I’d been closer to dying than I’d been in a long, long while.

I didn’t feel up to much of anything just yet, but I needed to get over that. Food would help. Coffee would help. A shower. But first, I had to sit up.

Pain lingered as I shifted upright into the bed. It wouldn’t keep me from fighting, from moving, from working though, and that was all that mattered. A hot meal or two, slowing it down a bit and I’d be fine. There was an odd, residual ache in my side and I could feel the pull of healing muscles, but that was it.

In the end, I was alive so hey, I couldn’t really complain. Considering the lingering weakness, it was probably nothing short of a miracle that I
was
alive, actually.

I slid a hand down and ran it over my side, grimacing as I felt the new array scars. “Who did the healing?” I asked. A full-fledged healing would have taken care of the pain, so I hadn’t gotten that, but somebody had done something.

“There wasn’t one. I was going to call Colleen once you woke up.” He covered my hand with his. “This could have been bad, kitten.”

I looked at him. “You know how many times I’ve seen you stumble through the door over the past few months, bones broken? Bleeding so bad sometimes I don’t even recognize you?”

His eyes flashed and he opened to his mouth.

But to his credit, he said nothing.

“If I was fully human and untrained, running around doing something I had no right to do, then maybe I’d understand,” I said quietly. “But this is what I’m
made
for…and short of trying my hand at full-time contract killings, Damon? This is the one thing I’m good at.”

“I told you I’d try.” Then he looked back down and blew out a ragged breath as he bent down and pressed his lips to my side. “Although, fuck, Kit, if I’d known it was going to be this hard right out of the gate, I might have made you agree to start working out naked all the damned time.”

A grin tugged at my lips as I curved my hand over the back of his neck. “You’re a deviant.”

“Hmmm. A little.” Then he straightened up and probed the wound at my side.

I leaned back and let him. He’d taken enough beatings in his life to know what to look for, plus I suspected he’d helped with some of the minor injuries that had happened within the clan, back when he’d been serving as one of the enforcers.

“It’s healing well,” he said softly.

“I can tell. As bad as I feel, I ought to be flat on my back, so somebody either helped me or had something handy to speed things along.”

He smoothed my shirt down over my ribs and glanced up to meet my eyes. “You can thank TJ for that. Apparently she had some high quality witches put together whatever she used on you before she sent you off with the Banner cop.”

She did have some high-quality witches. Colleen was the only witch TJ trusted so it was Colleen’s magic that had healed up the damage done to me. Sliding off the bed, I headed over to one of the mirrors and stared at my reflection. I don’t look like much. My hair is pale and under the summer sun, it would lighten to near white. We were deep into autumn now and the sun sometimes played peek-a-boo with the clouds so my hair was darkening to its natural light blonde shot through with streaks of platinum.

I’d expected to look almost gray with exhaustion, but I didn’t. Admittedly, I didn’t look my best, but it could have been worse. A lot worse. A hot shower, a couple of meals and I’d be okay.

Dropping my gaze to my neck, I stared at the new mark there.

A shapeshifter wouldn’t scar from such a bite, I knew. They bit each other when they acknowledged some sort of deep bond in a relationship. Damon had already done this to me once and I carried those marks on my wrist. At the time, he’d chosen my wrist to make a point—I’d fed Jude, the vampire I later realized was out to screw me over so very badly from the same wrist and Damon knew Jude would notice.

It wasn’t long after he’d taken the position as Alpha that we’d decided to play it quiet.

He worried I’d be a target.

I didn’t care. I didn’t
enjoy
being a target, but I’d dealt with it for the first part of my life—I could handle it. If I had him? Hey,
that
made this better all around already.

I had him and that was more than I’d ever expected. Sometimes my head still spun when I thought about just
what
I had with him. It didn’t always make sense, but he filled some empty space in my heart that I hadn’t even realized was there until he came along.

Now there was a new empty space, one caused by this mess Justin had dumped in my lap, and it was worse because if I messed things up…
No
. I cut that thought off. I wouldn’t mess it up. I knew how to do my job. It was one thing I was good at. I’d do my job and Damon would be fine.

I closed my eyes as I sensed him coming. I never heard him, but I always knew. I could feel the energy a shifter threw off and his in particular; it was warm, buzzing against my skin.

A living blanket.

As he moved to stand behind me, wrapping an arm around my upper body, I opened my eyes to look at him. With hooded eyes, he stared at me. “How much trouble are you in, Kit?” he asked, his voice lower than normal, rougher. “You need to tell me so I can help. Nobody is going to hurt you again, but I need to know what the hell is going on.”

He’d asked me that before.

“I already told you…I’m not.” I heaved out a sigh as I hooked my hands over his forearm and met his eyes.
I want to tell you
…And even as the thought entered my head, the headache slammed back into me. I swallowed back a groan and let my head fall, staring down at the plush area rug. The floors were hardwood, but Damon had put some rugs down. I suspected he’d done it for me. The floors always felt cold to me and I hated being cold…

“Something’s bothering you,” he whispered, drawing my eyes back to him. “Don’t tell me it’s not. I know you too well.”

“It’s not
me
that’s in trouble. I’m not lying.”

The phone rang again. That annoying, insistent, polite little ring. I swore under my breath and drove my head back against Damon’s chest.

“Hey…watch it. You had your head busted open, remember?”

“It’s fine.” I didn’t even have a headache now. Well, except for the magically induced one. That phone, though…

Sure, enough. It did another ring. I glared at it. “If you don’t answer that thing, I’m going to.”

He laughed a little. “Before you do—or I do—whichever, we should talk. I’ve been out of touch for a bit and that means they have business to discuss. They’ll come in here and see you–”

“I’ll go into your library,” I said sourly.

“No.” He stroked a thumb under the mark on my neck, careful to stay away from the wound itself. “I put this there for a reason, Kit. I’m not hiding you away and
you
aren’t hiding away. We’re done with this.”

“Damon…you just took your place here. They need to adjust to that before you throw
me
at them. For crying out loud, they’ll look at me and see somebody—”

Anything else I might have said was smothered against his mouth.

When he lifted his head, it was just enough for him to whisper, “I don’t care. I took you before I took this.
You
took me before all of this. I keep you. You keep me. It’s done. And if they don’t like it, they can try to remove me.” As he straightened, a mean smile curved his lips. “Let them try.”

Sighing, I eased away. None of the cats here who would even
want
him gone stood a chance. I knew that much, thanks to Chang and my own careful study of things over the past few months.

“So we do this now, huh?”

“We should have already done it.” Gray eyes bored into mine as he cupped my cheek. “We should have never bothered to hide it. That was my fuck-up. Maybe if I hadn’t tried to keep it quiet, something like yesterday wouldn’t have happened.”

“Not likely,” I muttered. “Anybody with eyes, anybody who actually pays attention already knows.”

I thought back to the confrontation back in Tennessee. Megan had known. Justin had mentioned there were rumors.

The word was out there. Some people listened to the rumors, some didn’t.

I eased away from him and absently scratched at my arm. “I need a shower, big guy. I don’t care what in the hell you have to do with whoever keeps calling.” I glanced at the phone, waiting for another ring. It didn’t happen. Maybe they’d gotten a clue. “Whatever you expect of me, it needs to be after I—”

The damn phone rang.
Again
.

I glared at it.

Damon moved away and answered it mid-ring.

“Ten minutes,” he snapped.

As he lowered it, he looked over at me. “Shower. Come out when you feel up to it. They’ll be in here a while. But
no
hiding…we do this, got it?”

I was tempted to do something really childish like say,
You can’t make me
.

I settled for sticking my tongue out him.

* * * * *

My bag was waiting for me in the bathroom and I grabbed it with greedy hands. Clean…I could be clean, and dressed…

Then I deflated as I realized then only thing I could be
dressed
in were jeans, clean panties, one of the tanks I wore under T-shirts. Oh. A bra. I did have a clean bra.

But where the hell was my spare shirt? I went through the bag again, but it didn’t magically appear. Even after I checked the pockets and dumped it upside down. Sighing, I gave up. For all I knew it had been used as one of the bandages on my side last night.

I saw the switch outside the shower and hit it, leaning in a little and smiling as I saw the fireplace come on. I could get used to that, I decided. A long hot shower. Maybe if I stalled long enough—

Then I scowled.

No more hiding.

So as much as I wished I could hide in the warmth of the shower forever, I made it short.

It took less than ten minutes; the heat of the water worked a miracle on my battered body. I stepped out of the shower feeling almost ready to face the day.

But then I heard the low murmur of voices outside and decided, no, I really wasn’t ready to face the day. Or Damon’s people. Pressing a hand to my neck, I closed my eyes. “We do this,” I told myself.

Come out when you feel up to it
—

“Not ready yet.”

The room where we’d been sleeping wasn’t
precisely
the main chamber. He had a series of rooms in front of it where his primary team stayed, and then his own private quarters behind those. Back here, there was a small kitchen, the ridiculous luxury of the bathrooms, his library and office. I could maybe grab one of his shirts, and clear my mind in the library or something. A couple of minutes. That was all I needed.

I paused by the massive walk-in closet outside adjacent to the bathroom and studied the clothes there. For a guy who mostly just wore T-shirt and jeans, he sure as hell had a lot of clothes. Reaching out, I touched my fingers to one of the shirts hanging closest to me. It was gray. I’d developed a mad love for gray it seemed, over the past few months. Tugging it off the hanger, I pulled it on and buttoned it up. It fell almost to my knees. That didn’t work. I tucked it in and started rolling up the sleeves as I left the closet.

I stopped at the door to the library, but for reasons I can’t really describe, I didn’t go in. Something tugged me toward his office. The lights were off and I left them that way as I slipped inside. The desk was a state of organized chaos. I studied everything, taking it all in as I rounded it. What was I looking for? I didn’t know, but there was something.

I knew this tug in my gut. It was the very same thing that had led me to Doyle. The very same thing that had helped me find Mandy all those years ago. The very same tug that had helped me solve I don’t know how many cases. That damned streak of luck.

Careful not to touch anything, I stood there. If I lingered too long, I leave too much of a scent trail and I couldn’t do that. If I touched anything, same problem. Blood roared in my ears as I stood there behind that desk, wrapped in his scent, listening to the voices out in the main chamber for far too long. A female voice, one that I didn’t like even though I couldn’t recall why.

Where are you, damn it?
I wondered.
What am I looking for
?

I willed my mind to go blank and just stared.

And then, finally, I saw it.

I’d been staring at the neat little list for a full sixty seconds before my brain processed what it was I was staring, just
what
it was I needed to find.