Bad Mouth(14)

Chapter Nine


Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Kade leaned against the back of the sofa and stared blindly out the open balcony door. Restlessness prowled inside him, but he didn’t want to move. His heart had stopped beating again, the blood stilling, moved only by his minimal muscle movements, and he missed the warmth in his veins.

Over the centuries, he’d never once given his prejudice a second thought, but he’d never met a human like Valerie Craig. His negligible contact with humans had primarily been with his childhood house staff and appointed subjugates, who he never bothered knowing by name. They had done nothing to pull the kind of compassion and confusion from him Val had. She challenged him when no one else would dare, and her determination, misguided as it was, had claimed his respect from the start. She was like Ezra in many ways. They’d get on well. For once, he got what his friend saw in humans. At least in some humans.

As for Ezra…He reached for the cell in his pocket. It hadn’t finished the first ring when Ezra’s gruff voice came over the line. “Find anything?”

“Yes, my friend,” Kade answered. “Selene saw a human at the downtown blooding two weeks ago.”

“She’s sure?”

“She said no, but I believe she was sure. Thrown off maybe because he was at a blooding.”

“So it was a male.”

“Yes, and there were two males at the blooding near Ptolomy’s estate. I’m sending you a copy of the video. Get the team on the wire. I want the word out and ears on the streets.” Kade growled with frustration. “Call me the second you find anything, no matter how small. A description. A name. An address. Even a rumor. I don’t care.”

Ezra’s end went silent a minute. “I thought we’d killed ’em all, brother.”

“Yeah.” Kade dropped his head into his hand. “So did I.”

“Are you going to tell Ms. Craig what you find?”

“Hell no. The VLO won’t understand some bloodings are necessary. She won’t understand. She values human life too much to forgive what I’ve done. What I’ve had to do and what I must continue to do.”

“You care?”

Kade thought hard, the turmoil in his gut nearly intolerable. “Yeah,” he rasped. “I think I give a shit.”

“Bravo, my prince.” Ezra laughed. “You don’t know how happy this makes me.”

“Fuck you.”

Ezra’s laughter echoed in his mind long after he ended the call. Good to know this painful, twisting shift in his worldview brought his friend such delight. He snorted. Someday the man would see the error of his ways.

Kade rose with a groan. It cut deep, this tearing between his past and his present. Perhaps he could prove himself right in his bigotry if he could only press his fangs into the tempting pulse at Val’s throat. Then he’d know all of her transgressions. Her sins would lie before him like a bloody feast, and the idea sickened him. He didn’t want to know her sins. For the first time, he wanted to be wrong about humans.

He longed to have anything but this personal adjuvant curse he’d been born with. Ezra’s talent dealt with the future and possibilities. That skill had potential. Seeing the unchangeable past was a useless ability. All it did was make him remember. It made him hate.

Val didn’t make him hateful. She had turned his reality upside down. How he saw her was nothing like the ones whose pasts were flayed open to him.

But he couldn’t allow such thoughts. If he let her in, she’d find the truth, a truth that would change everything between them. She might know of his tendencies toward his subjugates, but she had no idea he’d slain humans. And he had no remorse.

She could never find out.

He had to locate the humans on Ptolomy’s videotape, and that human from the rooftop and kill them all before the f*ckers started talking.





Chapter Ten


The walls vibrated from the force of a slamming door. Val raised her weary head from her desk, sure she���d have a red spot smack in the center. She glowered at Graham’s sour expression.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“You’re the one storming into my office and trying to break down my door. What is your problem?”

“My problem? You ran off alone at night with a crazy, sadistic bloodsucker, and I have the problem?” He nodded curtly, his lips tight. “Yeah. I talked to Alice. Thanks a lot for sharing, V. You know I never would have let you near Rollins if I’d known about him.”

“Let me? Since when did you start bossing me around? If you’ll remember, we didn’t exactly have a choice of who we had to work with.”

“Why’d you go alone? What’s going on between you two?”

For a moment, Val was taken aback. This was the most possessive she’d ever seen Graham. His expression, his stance…it was as though he’d gone off the deep end. He knew damn well they weren’t a couple. “Nothing’s going on, Graham. Stop acting like a jealous boyfriend. You’re supposed to be a professional.”

“Excuse me for caring about you, but I’m not gonna let him hurt you.”

“He would never hurt me.” The second the words had left her mouth, she knew they were wrong. Knew she should never had said them, let alone thought those five words could be anywhere near the truth.

“Never? How well do you know this guy? You’ve known him all of three days, and you know what he’s capable of?”

“I—” She sighed. He was right. She didn’t know Kade at all. It only felt like she’d known him longer. Admitting that made her unusually snippy. “Look, this argument is going nowhere. I have work for you, so I’d appreciate it if you did your job.” She tossed a stack of files toward him. “Read the notes and check all these leads. We’re looking for a human who witnessed the downtown blooding up close and personal.”

His scowl darkened, but he dropped the subject. “Another human actually at the blooding? Is any of this even possible?”

“Apparently so.”

He picked up the files. “All right.” He hesitated in the doorway, his fingers flicking the edge of the folders. “I really do care about you, Val.”

She looked up from her paperwork. “I know you’re only trying to protect me. Thank you, Graham. You’re my best friend.” She was pretty sure that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but he seemed satisfied enough.

She checked the clock—two in the afternoon already. Before Graham’s unwelcome interruption, she’d napped at her desk for a good hour and a half. If only the work could have magically happened while she slept the afternoon away. She rolled her shoulders and began sifting through the witness statements, hoping someone else had mentioned the presence of a third or fourth being. It was a long shot at best. She would have remembered a detail that important.

A rhythmic knock at the door startled her. When she glanced up, a handsome man grinned at her from the doorway. He looked Nordic with his shoulder-length, platinum-blond hair, extraordinary height, and broad shoulders. She half expected to see him pull out a giant hammer and call thunder and lightning from the heavens. A thin scar crossed from his right temple and through his eyebrow, stopping at the bridge of his nose.

“Well, well, well. You are beautiful.” Harsh—not the words, but his voice grating through his throat. Her eyes went there, but he wore a thin, muscle-hugging turtleneck. He’d followed her gaze and guessed at the question. “Terrible accident.”

He pulled up a chair in front of her desk and drew his collar down. A thick scar circled the base of his neck.

“Nearly lost my head,” he said.

She blinked a few times and realized she’d been staring slack-jawed at the man. “Uh, who are you?”

“Forgive my poor manners.” He reached forward to shake her hand. “My name is Ezra.”

Ezra. So this was Kade’s best friend, a Dominus as well. His eyes were a very light red and radiated more friendliness than a department store Santa. She’d encountered satisfied vampires, composed vampires, excited ones, wild partying ones, but a happy vampire? She’d never seen one with such a wide-open welcome in his smile.

“Have I caught you at a bad time?” He cocked his head.

“Oh, I’m sorry. No. I’m just surprised to see you here. You don’t look like an Ezra.”

He laughed. “I get that a lot. Long ago, I was adopted by a traveling missionary and renamed. Too young to remember what name I was born to.”

“Hopefully a good adoption,” she said. He gave her a solemn nod. When he remained silent, she cleared her throat. “Well, what brings you to the VLO?” She took a sip of her coffee that had grown cold while she’d napped.

“Personal business.” He winked. “My lordship tells me you gave him a heartbeat.”