Blood Bound (Mercy Thompson #2)(61)

It was a good thing that he'd started with my voice-if I'd believed Warren was screaming outside my trailer I'd never have been able to stay inside. Where it was safe. Maybe.

The last of Warren 's cries subsided, but Littleton wasn't finished with me yet. He tapped his way along the wall that was the end of the trailer. There was a window in that wall too, but I didn't see any sign of him, though it sounded as though he was tapping on the glass again.

He can't come in, I reminded myself silently, but I still flinched as the metal siding of my home shrieked and the trailer rocked a little. Then there was a brief silence.

He resumed his tapping, though it sounded more like banging now. Each time he hit the walls, both my home and I jerked. He continued around to the back, the sounds he made changing as he hit the bathroom wall. One of the tiles fell off the shower stall and shattered.

I kept the Marlin aimed toward him, but I kept my finger off the trigger. I couldn't see where I was shooting, and my neighbors' houses were well in range of the Marlin. Even if I managed not to kill any of them, shooting a gun would be bound to draw their attention. My nice neighbors wouldn't stand a chance against a vampire, especially not this vampire.

As far as my other, tougher neighbors were concerned... I was a little surprised the noise Littleton was making hadn't attracted them already. Still, Adam's house was well insulated. They might not hear Littleton 's voice well enough to worry about it, but a gun shot would bring them running.

Werewolves and sorcerers were a bad combination, though, according to Uncle Mike. I believed him-which is why I hadn't tried calling for help. I was beginning to think that Littleton really couldn't come in. He could scare me, but he couldn't come in and hurt me unless I invited him in.

"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin," I muttered.

He banged the wall again and I jumped. Seconds passed, a minute, then two and nothing happened. No screams, no bangs, no ripping siding-how was I going to explain that to my insurance company?

"Yes, Ma'am," I tried out. "This vampire queen asked me to hunt a vampire and demon combo. He found out somehow and it ticked him off so he ripped the siding off my house."

I sat down in the middle of my floor with the gun under my arm. "I guess I'll have to fix it myself. I wonder how much siding costs. And whatever else he damaged out there."

I couldn't remember if I'd gotten Medea inside before I went to bed. I usually did, but I'd been so tired... As soon as I got my courage up again, I'd go out and make sure Medea was sleeping in Samuel's room where she preferred to spend the night. I could call Andre-but...

My shoulders were stiff from the tension and I leaned my head to the side, stretching. Suddenly the floor underneath the carpet bent upwards with a tremendous noise. I sprang to my feet and shot my floor while it was still vibrating. I might not be super strong, but I am fast. I shot twice more in rapid succession. Then I waited, staring at the holes in my floor and the powder marks on my cream-colored Berber carpet.

Something moved in one of the holes and I jumped back, shooting again as several small objects were forced through holes that they were too large for. A moment later I heard a car door slam in my driveway and a German engine purred to life, a BMW like Littleton had been driving at the hotel. He drove off, not in a hurry, just another driver out on the road, and I stared at the four, misshapen, blood-covered, silver slugs he'd given back to me.

When my alarm went off, I was sitting in the middle of my bedroom floor with Medea curled up purring in my lap for comfort. Why is it that in all the adventure movies the heroine doesn't have to get up and go to work?

It had taken me an hour to send my neighbors back home. I'd told them the damage must have been done by some irate customer-or maybe one of the local gangs. Yes, I'd fired the shots to scare them off-I didn't think I'd hurt any of them. Maybe they hadn't known anyone was home. Of course I'd call the police, but there was no sense getting them out this late. I'd call them in the morning. Really.

I'd been planning on talking to Tony anyway, though I doubted I'd say anything about Littleton 's attack. There wasn't anything the police could do about him.

I could call in Zee, just for the day, but I wasn't going to sleep today anyway. I might as well save Zee's help for another day. I turned off the alarm and pushed a protesting Medea off my lap and threw on clothes so I could take a look at the damage Littleton had done to my trailer in the morning light.

The damage was worse than it had seemed last night. He hadn't torn off the siding, he'd cut it to ribbons from the roof to the bottom in segments a finger-length apart. I also had the answer to how he'd gotten underneath it. The cinder block foundation in the back had a person sized hole broken through it.

My trailer was a 1978, fourteen-by-seventy-foot model, long past its prime. It wasn't a showpiece, but it had, at least, been in one piece when I went to bed last night. Fixing it was going to cost an arm and two legs-if it could be fixed at all.

To that end, I'd better get ready to go to work or there would be no money to fix anything, including breakfast.

While I showered I thought about what I'd learned and what I hadn't. I didn't know where Littleton was now. I didn't know if a gun was useful against a vampire. I had three bullets that said perhaps not, but then they had been covered with blood so at least they'd done some damage. I didn't know why seeing ghosts made me dangerous to vampires, or how being immune to their magic was going to help me against a vampire who could do what he'd done to my trailer. And, after the demonstration Littleton had given me last night, I knew I was going to need Andre to destroy him.