CHAPTER 11 #3
“You’re welcome. I’m Layla.”
“I owe you,” she said. “One favor. Anything you need.”
I cocked a brow at her. “Anything?”
“Anything that won’t end with me dead.”
That was a hell of an offer. One I’d be stupid to pass up. I took two steps away and scooped up my dropped clutch, careful to keep my gaze from the decomposing body. A gurgling sound came from it that turned the limited contents of my stomach into pure acid.
I walked back to the witch and pulled out my phone. “Give me your number.”
She hesitated, then glanced at the other wolves. One of them snarled at her. She turned back to me and held out her hand. I passed my phone over and watched her enter her contact information. I immediately called her. Her phone rang from her back pocket, and I hung up.
“Now you have mine, too,” I said. “I want one other thing besides a favor.”
“What?”
“If the order changes from watching me to something else, let me know.”
“Done,” she said.
“And if you don’t, you’ll have to deal with Michael.”
Her fear scent spiked again. I couldn’t blame her. After everything that just happened, she should be afraid of him.
We were there for another ten minutes. I stuck to Bonnie’s side like glue while she answered Monica’s questions. Afterward, she went on her way with a promise of safe passage out of the territory. I told her to text me when she was out, so I knew that the wolves had kept their word.
I still couldn’t look at the corpse. It had stopped making noises, but the sickly-sweet smell of its rotting flesh permeated the alley.
I retreated close to the SUV, savoring the air that wafted in from the street just past it.
The smell of chemicals and car exhaust was much better than death.
Even the chaotic sounds of the city were a welcome relief right now.
I needed them to distract me from the inner turmoil that threatened.
Michael’s wolves spread through the alley, some carrying boxes filled with instruments, a few working to clean up the body, still others scaling the walls and disappearing onto the roofs as they tried to track the vampire’s scent.
They were like a paranormal emergency response team, one that moved like a well-oiled machine, and it made me wonder how often they got called out to scenes like this.
A second SUV pulled up to the curb just past the first, this one familiar. The driver’s side window rolled down and Ronald peered out.
“Layla,” Michael said.
I hadn’t heard him approach, which showed just how out of it I was.
Michael put his hand on my lower back and escorted me to the vehicle.
I climbed in. Ronald drove us the short distance back to the apartment and stayed with us all the way to the front door, he and Michael poring over every detail of the attack.
I stayed quiet, stuck in my own head, replaying the moment when undeath had fled from the vampire’s eyes and true death took over.
I stood in the middle of Michael’s living room after Ronald left, hugging myself.
Michael approached me slowly, like I might bolt. Wariness came through the bond. He stopped an arm’s length away, his brown eyes gazing steadily into mine. “Talk to me.”
“We killed it.”
“I killed it,” he said.
“But I held it there. I kept my hand around its throat while you…”
I gagged and ran for the bathroom. We never made it to dinner, and I threw up sour wine and bile that only made me heave harder.
Michael followed me in, the bond bringing out his protective instincts.
Afterward, he flushed the toilet while I washed my mouth out and scrubbed the tears and snot from my face.
I didn’t go far, afraid the need to vomit would come rushing back.
Instead, I sank down onto the cool tile floor and leaned against the clawfoot tub.
Michael sat next to me, pressed close so we touched from shoulder to ankle.
I needed the contact—it offered both relief and distraction—and when he relaxed into me, I realized I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “The first kill is the hardest.”
The first kill. I had helped kill someone. I was a murderer.
Goddess help me.
I tried to tell myself that we didn’t have a choice. That it was the vampire or us. But that was bullshit. It was newly undead. Michael had been kicking its ass. We could have beat it to a bloody pulp and sent it back to its brood to serve as a warning. We didn’t have to kill it.
No. Not it.
Him.
He might have looked like a monster, but once he’d been a person.
He had parents, a family. Maybe he still kept in touch with them.
He might have had a romantic partner. Like the witch, he might have only been there following orders.
And I’d held him down in a dirty back alley while my mate ground his heart to dust. His friends and family and broodmates would never see him again.
I doubted they’d ever even learn what happened to him.
A tear slipped down my cheek as I turned to look at Michael. “How do I deal with this?”
His expression was carefully neutral. He’d retreated far into himself, so almost nothing came across the bond.
“Remember that he wasn’t human. He’d already killed our sentries.
If we hadn’t interceded on the witch’s behalf, he would have drained her dry.
He would have reveled in the resulting high.
With such an influx of power, he might have gone on to kill several more people tonight, gluttoning himself like an overripe tick. ”
That was right. He’d killed Michael’s people. I’d somehow forgotten that. “How many wolves did he take out?”
“Two that we know of so far.”
I frowned. “How? How did he manage to kill two wolves and then corner that witch so soon after sunset?”
Michael’s expression hardened. “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
“Do you think he had help? That there were more of them?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“He felt wrong to me, Michael. The witch said she didn’t feel him until he was right on top of her, but I couldn’t feel him at all. Even when I focused my power on him. It was like he wasn’t there. Like he’d been cloaked.”
“He’d need a witch’s aid for that. You saw them tonight. They loathe each other. A witch would never stoop to helping a vampire. Not even if she’d been exiled from the coven.”
“What if they forced her to? They could be holding one captive and making her cast the cloaking spell. There could be more vampires hiding in your territory.”
His expression turned contemplative. “I’ll make some phone calls. We may be close to war, but we still have intelligence sharing avenues open. If the witches are missing one of their own and think she’s being used in such a way, they’ll handle it.”
“Why not help them?” I asked. “Why not try to stop all this infighting and instead make an alliance with them against the vampires? Witches might be obnoxious, but they’re not monsters.”
He turned to regard me from inches away. “You only say that because you haven’t been around them long enough to learn better. Don’t underestimate them. And never trust them. They’ve done things to my family and our people that would make what we did tonight seem like child’s play.”
A tingle ran down my spine. “Like what?”
“I think you’ve suffered enough shocks tonight. Tomorrow, if you still want to know, I’ll tell you the stories.”
A few minutes later, I managed to haul myself up off the ground.
Michael remained nearby while I showered.
I didn’t ask him to, and he didn’t offer, but I felt him lingering outside the door, waiting, ready if I needed him.
After I cleaned myself up, he coaxed me into eating.
The food tasted like ash, but I choked it down.
I’d burned through a lot of calories shifting parts of myself, and I needed to replenish them if I didn’t want to look half-starved come morning.
We said good night outside my bedroom door.
I woke several hours later, crying. I’d dreamed of the vampire.
What he’d been like as a human. My subconscious, intent on torturing me, had given him a nice, happy, normal life.
Had humanized him even in his vampirehood.
And then it had me kill him in cold blood in the middle of a crowded street like some sort of deranged assassin while his family screamed nearby.
Michael was there when I woke up, standing next to my bed. I reached out and latched onto his hand as I sobbed, and he sat, carefully, on the very edge of my mattress until I fell back asleep.