Chapter Thirty-Two
I was on my way to the mayor’s house when Anika Draper called. “Your stalker wolf is good, kitten. Obviously he’s gained a lot of experience over the years. I can’t find the bastard.”
My immediate knee-jerk reaction to her voice was to get angry, but it was less savage, tempered by time.
“Jared’s hunting him as well,” I said, distracted. “Voss is going to show up. I’m just not sure when.”
Maybe I should have canceled dinner. I didn’t want to take Voss to the mayor’s house if he was inclined to cause that kind of trouble. But he couldn’t possibly have known I was having dinner with Louis and Amy.
I smelled him in the city, and that was all it was.
I hung up on Anika and called Rick.
“Kait? Everything okay?”
“I’m getting a bad feeling, Rick. Just…”
“I’ll be careful,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”
I snorted and ended the call.
As if I would ever not worry about the detective.
By the time I arrived at Louis’s property, Rick was already there, standing outside his car, waiting for me.
The gates were electronic, and when Rick pushed a button and announced our arrival, someone buzzed us in.
Gates and fences were good, but they wouldn’t keep a wolf out. Not even a little bit.
Louis and Amy, his wife, were in the courtyard, their arms around each other’s waists, smiling as they watched us walking toward them.
“I wish they wouldn’t do that,” I muttered. Ordinarily, the mayor standing outside with Amy on a nice, sunny day wouldn’t have worried me. But right now, they weren’t safe.
Rick lightly touched my lower back as we walked and gave me a smile when I glanced at him. He must’ve seen something in my eyes, though, because his body tensed and he dropped the smile. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure.” But Louis and Amy were vulnerable, and I realized how much I’d come to care about both of them.
And something just wasn’t right.
It took me much longer than it should have to understand that Gavin Voss had decided he’d been quiet long enough. He was about to cause some trouble. He’d somehow discovered my dinner with the Hedricks, and he was there.
He was there.
I could smell him.
“Mayor,” I called. “Louis.”
I rarely called him Louis, and there must have been something in my voice, because all three men frowned as they looked at me.
Rick drew his gun and jogged to the mayor, and Zach was at my back immediately, his blades in his hands.
“Go inside, Mayor,” I said. Not loudly, but even I could hear the panic in my voice. “Go inside with Amy. Right now.”
Two of the mayor’s security team, probably the only two at the house—even though Louis had promised me he’d keep a team with him at all times—rushed from the shadows and ushered Louis and Amy in through the large courtyard doors.
Rick was yards away from me, and I knew that against the werewolf’s magic, the gun wouldn’t help him at all. But there was no time to beg him to go inside. He wouldn’t have listened to me anyway.
How quickly things could change.
I snatched my phone from my pocket so quickly that I nearly dropped it, then turned in a circle, watching for the wolves who were clogging the air with their invasive scents. I brought up Anika’s name and sent a short text.
Need you at the mayor’s house.
Then I dropped my phone back into my pocket just as the first of the wolves converged. Not Voss, though. Not yet. That wasn’t his style. He’d want to draw things out. He’d want to cause pain, chaos, and death.
He’d want to play, chase, hunt.
And I didn’t so much as let my stare flicker to Rick. He would find a safe place when the wolves were occupied with fighting.
I had to believe that, or I would have crumbled.
Some of the wolves shifted, but not all of them. In daylight. At a human’s house.
We began to fight.
The sun fought with us, vivid blood-red and yellow splashes of light and blood painting an eerily beautiful and mystical picture in the somewhat dim everyday world of the city.
I got flashes of it, but those flashes were not new. Neither was the pain, acknowledged and then released, because there was no time for pain, no time to wonder if I was up to the task without my magic, and especially without my blade.
The madness came, though, and I was what my birth mother had helped make me.
A killing machine.
More wolves came. So many wolves.
And then, through the thick, furry bodies and the stench of blood and sweat and fear, I saw Rick lying crumpled on the ground, bloody and still.
“Zach,” I screamed, and I didn’t have to tell him what I needed him to do.
He ducked the wolves slashing at him with their wicked, sharp claws and left me alone to go to Rick.
I could take care of myself.
Then Zach was fighting his way back to me, and Rick was safe.
I hoped.
Zach and I fought back-to-back, and I sorely missed Joe. I missed fighting with Sam and Remy, and god, I missed my alpha.
They didn’t magically appear to help even the odds, but I got someone just as impressive.
Anika Draper.
She was all in. She wanted to end the wolves and find Voss to make up for her mistake in taking all my magic. Maybe she needed to make things right between her and her God. And maybe she just liked to fight.
Sort of like me.
She went at the wolves with a viciousness and hatred that a regular person might have bestowed upon their worst enemy.
And yes, she evened the odds.
She didn’t have magic, except for her amazing blade, but she didn’t need it. She fought like Zach and I did—with fists and rage and blades.
Only Zach’s blades were ordinary blades, but Zach was not an ordinary guy, and he made up for his weapons’ lack of magic. There was power inside Zach.
When there were only three of the enemy left, I grabbed Anika’s bloody arm to stop her when she would have gone to help him. “Watch,” I murmured. “Watch him dance.”
Zach didn’t disappoint. He was the most impressive fighter I’d ever seen in my life. The most impressive with the blades he wielded, the most impressive mover.
His fight was indeed a dance, a bloody, brutal dance that was somehow loose-limbed and lazy as much as it was quick and powerful and full of so much energy that I could feel the wind from his body when he moved.
He whirled and jumped and killed with a savage grace that made it impossible to look away.
Even after all the times I’d seen him use his blades, I held my breath, excited and awed and amazed, my heart slamming against my ribs, my fists clenched.
“Good God,” Anika said, when the three men lay scattered on the ground, and Zach looked through his long, bloody hair and smiled at us. “I haven’t had chills in a long fucking time, but he just gave them to me. I want to know that man.”
Before I could say anything or even try to sort out whatever it was I was feeling about Anika Draper, she looked from the approaching Zach to me. “This makes us even.”
I laughed, but it was dry and harsh. “Not even close,” I said.
Then I gathered all the rage that still swirled inside me, and I let my psycho take over.
I punched her in the face, and as she was on the ground trying to figure out what the hell had just happened, I straddled her and began to almost calmly beat the hell out of her.
I held back, though, because despite everything, I really didn’t want her dead.
And when I finally jumped off her, I left my hatred, bitterness, and resentment over the loss of my magic there in her broken face. I let it go. I had to accept the fact that it was gone, and I had to forgive her—sort of—for taking it. It was the only way I’d be able to move past it.
“Now,” I said as she attempted to sit up, failed, and tried again. “We’re closer to even. If you fuck with me again, if you fuck with one of mine, I will kill you.”
Zach held out a hand and helped her to her feet. “We will kill you,” he told her. “Kait is willing to give you a pass. You want to make it right. We’ll let you do that. Don’t make us regret it.”
She spat blood and wiped her swollen lips. “Deal.” Her eyes twinkled as she grinned at me. “Maybe I deserved what you gave me. But that’s the last of it. Come at me again, Kait Silver, and we’ll have some real fun.”
I wasn’t the only one with an inner psycho.
I glanced around at the blood and bodies on the ground. “We need to get this cleaned up before…” I shrugged. “Before everything.”
She pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “I’ll take care of it.”
I stepped back into the shadows with Zach to watch, because I for damn sure wasn’t leaving the mayor’s property until she was gone. I might have let go of my grudge, but I wasn’t going to trust her with my friends.
A short time later the mayor’s gates opened, admitting two sleek, black vans. Two men and one woman, all dressed in gray coveralls, jumped from the first vehicle, and four men left the second.
They began quietly and quickly to sanitize the area. In less than forty-five minutes, the bodies were wrapped and loaded into the van, the ground was washed free of blood and gore, and other than some wetness, it looked like nothing had ever happened. At least to the casual viewer.
Other than a quick, murmured conversation with Anika, none of the cleaners spoke a word or even glanced at Zach or me.
And as they sped away, I went to stand beside Anika to stare after the van, impressed despite myself. “Do they have a card?”
She laughed, and then, pissing me off to extreme amounts, she reached out to tug my braid. “I’ll call you tomorrow, kitten. We’ll go after the werewolf.”
She strode away, whistling, though I wasn’t sure how she managed it after the brutal beating I’d just given her.
“I hate that woman,” I muttered.
Zach said nothing, and I realized he was as unconvinced about the validity of that statement as I was.
After making sure none of his injuries were severe, I hurried back into the mayor’s house to check on the detective and give explanations and reassurances to Louis.
Amy was icing a lump over Rick’s temple, and though he was pale and likely had a hell of a headache, he assured me he’d be okay.
But again, there was something in his eyes.
“I’m tired of not being enough in these battles,” he murmured as I sat beside him, my fingers laced with his. “I’m tired of wondering if this is the day the bastards are going to kill me. But mostly I worry about leaving you.”
Maybe it was because he’d begun to realize how uncertain life was that he was saying what he felt.
I considered for a moment cutting him out of my life. Just cutting him out so he could live a somewhat normal life. Forcing him away from the brutal world of the nonhumans.
I could have told him I was afraid, too.
I was terrified that each time he found himself surrounded by supernaturals, he wouldn’t come out of it still breathing.
As much as he feared I would be ended by the ones I fought, I worried the same about him.
And my worry was more likely to happen, because he was a fucking human.
But in the end, I said nothing.
I squeezed his hand and said my goodbyes to Louis and Amy.
Then I strode back out into the sunny chaos. And there was joy in my heart, because Rick Moreno was alive.