10. Chapter 10
10
I turned off the tub faucet and scooped up Sombra, carrying him out to the living room. He didn’t struggle as I put him in the extra-large cat carrier I had purchased a couple of months ago when I took him in for his first post-stray vet visit.
I had almost made it to my sedan when a man and a woman emerged from the door of a ground-floor apartment near my covered parking spot. They headed for a car a few stalls down from mine while I struggled to wedge the carrier into my compact’s pint-sized backseat. It could fit—I had done it before—but it had taken some finessing. I wasn’t currently in a finessing state of mind.
“Here,” the woman said, jogging ahead of her companion. “Let me help you.”
I smiled and shook my head. “Thanks, but I’ve got it.” With a grunt, I shoved the carrier into the car.
And the woman kept coming.
Alarm bells went off in my head, but before I could do anything—before I could even shut the back door—the woman lunged forward. The air shimmered with magic around her, and in midair, she transformed into a huge red wolf.
I shrieked, stumbling backward into the side of the car parked beside mine.
Sombra’s carrier exploded, sending pieces of shrapnel flying. The small metal-grate door slammed into my knee, causing a starburst of pain, and bits of razor-sharp plastic sliced through my jeans. But the pain was quickly overshadowed by my shock at seeing a giant fucking panther leap out of the backseat of my car.
I gaped as it crashed into the wolf shifter. “S–Sombra?”
Someone grabbed my arm, yanking me out from between the relative shelter of the cars. The wolf shifter’s male companion. My initial shock faded, and Javier’s training finally kicked in. I reflexively spun toward my attacker and punched him in the throat. When he released me to clutch his neck, I grabbed his shoulders and kneed him as hard as I could in the groin. He dropped to the ground on all fours.
I spun away from him and raced back toward my car. The panther and wolf growled and snarled as they viciously wrestled on the walkway beyond the front bumper. I dove into the driver’s seat of my sedan and pushed the ignition button.
The engine rumbled to life as the man I had taken down regained his feet. The air around him shimmered. He was shifting.
I put the car in reverse and slammed my foot on the gas. The tires squealed, then caught the pavement, and the sedan lurched backward. The rear bumper rammed into the Sun assassin mid-shift, and he vanished from sight, the car bouncing as the tires rolled over his body. It would take more than that to kill a shifter, but at least the injuries would stun him for long enough that I could get away before he transformed into his animal form and healed himself.
I jerked the steering wheel to the right, then straightened it out, leaning across the center console to open the passenger side door as I pulled forward to line up the open car door with my now empty parking spot. “Sombra!” I shouted to the panther grappling with the red wolf.
The cat-turned-panther was a shifter, obviously, which meant he was my enemy, but he had saved my life. I couldn’t just leave him here to fight to the death when I was the reason he’d entered this fight in the first place.
“Get in!”
The giant black cat rolled with the wolf shifter, kicking her away with his muscular back legs just long enough for him to leap into the empty parking spot. His next stride brought him hurtling into my car, slamming me against the driver’s side door. I gunned the gas, the sudden forward momentum shutting the passenger door, and peeled out of the parking lot.
The panther shifter scrambled into the backseat, where he collapsed, breathing hard. My jeans were soaked with warm, wet blood, and he had left a glossy crimson smear across the center console. He was injured—badly, from the looks of it.
“Just shift,” I said, watching him in the rearview mirror as I sped down the street. He would be naked and starving in his human form, but at least his wounds would be healed.
The panther chuffed, and I had the oddest impression that he was arguing with me. At this rate, he would pass out, and then Gavin and I would have to haul an unconscious panther out of my car, and that was assuming Gavin didn’t kill him outright. I didn’t know the vampire guardian well, or at all, but I had known a guardian, and Javier wouldn’t have hesitated to tear the panther shifter’s head off. Unlike getting run over by a car, that would kill him.
“Oh my goddess, just shift ,” I ordered, my voice resonating with the command.
The instant the words left my mouth, the air shimmered around the panther. That giant, black, furry body transformed into a muscled male form with bloodstained copper skin covered in intricate arcane tattoos. His large hand gripped the top of my seat back, and he hauled himself upright, giving me my first good look at his face.
“Bastian!” I gasped, my stare locked on the rearview mirror in horror.
His focus flicked forward. “Red light,” he said.
I slammed on the brakes, gripping the steering wheel tight in both hands. The car skidded to a halt, but I didn’t take my eyes off the rearview mirror and the reflection of the man in the back seat. Of the shifter I had been stupid enough to fall for.
We stared at one another in the mirror until the car behind me honked, alerting me that the traffic light had switched to green. Jaw clenched, I dragged my attention back to the road and pushed on the gas pedal.
“Soph—”
“Don’t say a fucking word,” I hissed, fuming as I shook my head. I glanced at him, just a flick of my eyes. “How could you?”
He inhaled and exhaled a controlled deep breath, but he didn’t respond. Probably because I had told him not to speak.
“Answer me!” I snapped.
Bastian’s lips parted, and he sucked in a breath. “It was an accident,” he said, his voice rough.
I guffawed. “You fucked me by accident ?”
“I fell in love with you by accident,” he threw back at me.
I opened my mouth, then shut it again, pressing my lips together as I focused on the road ahead instead of the way his confession made me feel. We drove in silence for minutes, but I finally broke it when we were a few turns away from the vet’s office.
I guided the car around a corner, then glanced at him in the mirror. “Were you sent to spy on me?”
Bastian exhaled heavily through his nose. “Yeah.”
“How screwed are you now?”
He let out a bitter laugh and shook his head. “All the way,” he said. “If they find me, I’m dead.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek, considering my options. “Do you want me to pull over to let you out?”
“Nah.” Hands gripping the tops of both seatbacks, he leaned forward until his head was in line with the headrests. “I’m going to take my chances with the vamp,” he said. “If he doesn’t kill me outright, at least then I’ll be able to help him protect you.”
Ever so slowly, I shook my head. “You’re insane.” I could feel his gaze on the side of my face.
“Maybe.” He reached forward, plucking my phone out of the cupholder. “You need to ditch this. They’ll use it to track you now that they know they can no longer rely on me.”
I frowned. “I thought the House of the Sun wasn’t good with tech.” At least, that was what Javier had told me. And Gavin hadn’t seemed concerned that my phone was tapped or bugged or whatever. He seemed more worried that any shifters nearby could listen in on our conversation with their heightened sense of hearing.
“We’re not,” Bastian admitted. “But the humans we sometimes sub out to are.”
“Shit,” I said, slamming my palm against the steering wheel. “Shit, shit, shit !”
I didn’t really need my phone. I had memorized the only number that truly mattered to me long ago. But we were a few blocks from the rendezvous point. If the Sun assassins could track the phone this far, would they be able to find me?
I pressed the button on the door to lower the passenger side window, and Bastian flung the phone outside.
“You didn’t have tattoos before, when we . . . when you . . .” I cleared my throat and refocused on the road. “How did you hide them?”
“Shifter trick,” he said.
My brow furrowed, but I assumed this was one of the many, many things I didn’t know about the immortal world.
“Could an undead vampire tell you’re a shifter when you’re in your house cat form?”
The corners of Bastian’s mouth tensed, and he nodded. “He’ll be able to smell my true nature.”
I pressed my lips together and flipped on the blinker, then turned into the parking lot of the Wallingford Veterinary Hospital . A quick scan of the dirty and older model cars present made it glaringly obvious which belonged to the vampire. I pulled in next to the slate-gray Tesla and shut off my car.
After a deep breath, I pushed open my door and stepped out.
The vampire—Gavin—emerged as well, just as mesmerizingly beautiful as he had been at the bar and in my dreams. His stark gray stare shifted past me, locking on the naked man in the backseat of my car. “Is that a gift for me?”
“No,” I said, glancing at my car as Bastian opened the back door and slowly stepped out, hands raised. “He saved my life.” I shrugged one shoulder, exhausted by this situation. “It’s a long story. Please don’t kill him.”
Gavin clenched and unclenched his jaw, then shifted his focus to me. “Get in,” he said. “Both of you.”