Moonlight's Ambassador (Aileen Travers Book 3)(78)

"What happened?" I asked.

He tilted his head as he looked at me. "How much do you remember?"

I glanced away, one hand going to my leg. It was healed, the skin smooth through the torn jeans. "Caroline biting me." And then escaping. "Did they catch her?" I was afraid of the answer.

"No, she got away."

I nodded. I remembered her swimming away, her larger size giving her an advantage over the smaller wolves trying to catch her.

"She seems to be one of a kind," Nathan said, sounding unhappy about that.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"The alpha forgot to mention that her bite can be highly toxic to anyone. Something about the demon taint affecting things again. It's why Brax was unsuccessful when he tried to pull out the toxin, and why Liam couldn't heal you when you were injured."

I blinked. "Wait, didn't she attack that woman, Lisa, I think her name was?"

"Yeah, her bite hadn’t fully developed yet." He leaned against the wall.

He watched me with enigmatic eyes as I tried not to touch anything on me. I'd never been a fan of dirt, and blood was even worse. It covered every inch of me, and I knew if I licked my lips I'd taste it. Tempting as it was to experience the high their blood would no doubt give me, I needed to be clearheaded.

"Where are Liam and Thomas now?" I asked.

"Giving the alpha the third degree. They're not exactly happy about how things turned out," he said in a sardonic voice.

"It's not his fault," I said in a quiet voice.

Nathan snorted. "He withheld valuable intelligence about the danger she posed. If you hadn't been hurt, it could have been one of us. Not to mention she killed the companions."

"She said she didn't," I said. "She got there after they were already dead."

"And you believed her? After this? She almost killed you. She damn near ripped off that leg. Do you have any idea how long it would take you to regenerate that? Decades."

I was silent a long moment. All that was true.

"She's dangerous, Aileen. She can't be allowed to roam the city unchecked. I'm not even sure at this point if Thomas will allow her to live. Demon taint is very serious, and a wolf that can kill with its bite alone is a weapon he won't allow his enemies to have." Nathan straightened. "You should prepare yourself for the worst."

I stared up at him, unable to respond.

His shoulders bunched before he relaxed. "Come on. You should get a shower and clean up. You look like a murder victim right now."

"More like Carrie at the prom," I said.

He chuckled. "You're right. Only you don't have the cool powers."

True. Baby vampires were notoriously weak when it came to raw power. It'd be a century or more before I became any kind of player.

I let him lead me to a shower that was thankfully part of the same suite I'd found myself I in, since it meant I didn't have to walk around the mansion letting everyone stare at me. Even for a vampire stronghold, I would present quite the sight. He left me alone in the large space, with a shower as nice as the one in my room. What did they do—design every shower in this place with a hedonist in mind?

I discarded my ruined clothes on the bathroom floor and stepped under the warm water, letting it rinse the blood off me. I didn't let myself linger, even though I felt fragile after my brush with death—the closest I'd come in a very long time—since my turn in fact. There wasn't enough hot water in the world to wash that experience off.

I didn't have the luxury of indulging my weaknesses either. Caroline's life depended on me finding a solution to the problems facing us.

Despite her attack on me, I believed her when she said she didn't kill those people. Call me crazy or naive, but I know she would either have told me the truth or not remembered it at all. Even if it was a lie, I owed it to our friendship to verify it.

Her talk of Thomas’s descendants had gotten me thinking.

I stepped out of the shower, having scrubbed myself clean three times over, and wrapped myself in a big, fluffy towel—the kind you find in really high-end hotels. Clothes had been folded and left for me on the toilet. I wasted no time in getting dressed.

Nathan waited for me on a sofa in the next room. One wouldn't guess he was a century-old vampire from the way he watched his cell phone. He would fit right in with people my age who never seemed to lift their faces from their smart phones anymore.

Hearing me, he clicked a button and stuffed the phone in his pocket. "Liam wants you to stay here for now. He'll be down once he's done."

"I have a better idea. Why don't you take me to see the rooms of the companions who died?" I suggested.

He hesitated, the request unexpected.

"Look, you're all convinced she's the murderer. It won't hurt to let me take a look at their things." I shrugged. "If I find nothing, I find nothing. Maybe it'll even help me process this shit."

He frowned in consideration and studied me, looking for an angle. I kept my expression expectant without trying to seem impatient. There wasn't an angle. I really did just want to look around.

"Fine, but you don't go anywhere but those rooms, and you don't try anything like escaping to go find the mad wolf." He pointed his finger at me.