swung out a three-inch blade. “You’re not immune to this, are you? It’ll take longer and hurt more, but I’m a very patient man.”
All the blood had rushed to my head, and a tear rolled up over my eyebrow and landed with a thud in the metal bowl. This seemed to amuse the chief even more. He grinned, then laid the Leatherman blade flat across his outstretched palm and tugged it through the skin in one slick, elegant slice. He closed his eyes as though savoring the ecstasy of the pain as his blood dripped in thick, velvet-red drops into the metal pan.
“Oliver, no! If you mix your blood with Sophie’s this way you will bleed out your humanity—and hers!” Mr. Sampson said, his face contorted in anguish.
The chief glared at Sampson, his narrowed eyes a rich mix of violet and crimson, his lips held in a disgusted, grotesque grin.
“Trust me—Sophie won’t need hers. And what has humanity ever done?” Chief Oliver spat. “It puts murderers back on the street; it sends rapists back to the raped. It seeps through the gutters; it slices”—his eyes washed over his open wound—“through the demons of this city as they tear out the throats of our children. Humanity shouldn’t exist in this city. Humanity should be stamped out.” He clenched his fist, the blood oozing like red ribbons through his fingers and pooling into the bowl.
“Oh God,” I moaned, wriggling from my ankle chains. “Oh God!” I wrinkled my nose against the noxious stench of Chief Oliver’s blood—metallic, with the unmistakable waft of—mold?
I squirmed again, and the chief glared at me. “Stop that!” he barked.
I waggled anyway—really, what did I have to lose? And craned my neck to peer behind me out the little window. And there, pressed up against the glass, was the most beautiful face I’d ever seen: gray, with thin black lips encircling yellowed, snaggleteeth, caterpillar eyebrows framing beady black eyes. I sucked in a mold-scented breath, and Steve pressed one stubby troll finger up to his pursed lips, silencing me.
I turned my head back around, coming nose to nose with the dull tip of Chief Oliver’s Leatherman blade. If I had any saliva left in my mouth, I would have gulped. Instead, I opened my mouth and let out a wailing scream while doing my best to flop around like a caught fish, bashing my arms around in the air in front of me.
“Ahhh! Help me, help me, help me! I’m down here! The chief is crazy! He’s going to kill us!” I continued flopping and waggling, hoping to buy myself some time, while the chief stabbed wildly at the air in front of me.
“Stop!” The blade came slicing down a half inch from my ear.
“Agh!” I shrieked as the end of the blade caught my shoulder, ripping into the flesh. I yanked myself back while the chief grabbed at the knife, stuck in my flesh.
“Steve!” I howled. “Steeeeve!”
There was a crash and then the tinkling of broken glass. The chief and I both craned our necks, staring down at Steve, lying on his side, showered with shards of glass. In a flash Steve was up on his small troll feet and in full karate stance. The chief grinned down at Steve.
“This is the cavalry?” Chief Oliver put his hands on his hips, yanked the Leatherman from my shoulder, and picked up the Sword of Bethesda again. He held one knife in each hand, battle stance ready, and grinned.
I howled.
“Steve is Sophie’s hero! You will not hurt my Sophie!” Steve yelled before launching himself, snaggleteeth bared, into the chief’s shins.
“Yeooooowwww!” The chief howled, pounding his fist against Steve’s bald head.
“Get him, Steve!” I shouted, flopping around ineffectually, my shoulder wound gaping and cold.
The chief centered his narrowed, hateful eyes on me, and I heard the whoosh of wind and then felt a cold tingle from collarbone to armpit. I arched my head forward and saw little pearls of velvety blood beading from a crooked gash across my chest.
“Oh!” I wailed.
“Sophie!” My name was nearly lost in the gurgling growl of Mr. Sampson’s voice as it deepened.
I heard the unmistakable clank of metal clattering against concrete, the splintering of wood, and all at once the chief was laid out on his back, pinned by a fearsome wolf, the brown hair along its spine prickled and raised, its snapping jaws sinking into Chief Oliver’s shoulder, washing the wolf’s fur in a deep red. Steve rolled along on the concrete and ended up on his back, then bounded up, scurrying under the table.
“Oliver!”
I was flopping around, my vision going hazy from the blood rushing to my head and the little rivulets of blood dribbling from my chest and shoulder, but I thought I saw—
“Parker?” I mumbled.
He was standing at the top of the stairs, gun drawn, a gaggle of men in black clothing standing behind him. My head flopped back to where Mr. Sampson was, to the broken chains—and to the enormous werewolf pawing at Chief Oliver.
“Oh God,” I said. “Mr. Sampson?”
The werewolf cocked his head at me, his jaws set hard, the fur around his lips damp with crimson blood and quivering. The velvety brown eyes looked at me, and I could see the familiar crinkle in the corners. The wolf lowered its head, and then, in one fell motion, he bounded from hind legs against the chief’s chest, onto the table underneath my head, and out the broken open window. I choked a cry, the faint scent of Mr. Sampson’s cologne wafting by.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Parker cuffed the moaning police chief and handed him off to a herd of SWAT officers in black flak jackets who came down the stairs, helping to load him on a stretcher. Steve stepped out from under the table and barked directions as Parker came over to me, cobalt eyes wide.
“You’re cut,” he said. “I’ll get a medic.”
I flopped—my best upside-down attempt at a shrug. “It’s not deep,” I said. “I’d just like to get down.” I looked at my blood-stained bra, scanned the room full of police men. “And maybe get a shirt on.”
Parker shrugged out of his flak jacket and whipped off his T-shirt, draping it over me. I was hanging upside down, just a hairsbreadth away from having been drained of my blood by a power-hungry psychopath, and my body betrayed me. It went goose-bumpy and a little flutter in my stomach went down (or up?) to my nether regions as Parker’s fingertips brushed over the naked skin on my abdomen.
“I’d really like to get down now.”
Once Parker and the other SWAT officers had me out of the ankle cuffs and right side up, I sat down hard on the concrete floor, feeling the blood rush back to my limbs. I took a deep breath and rubbed my eyes, then blinked, for the first time noticing Vlad—black clad, as usual—as he stepped out from the group of SWAT guys and eyed me.
“Vlad, you’re here.”
He looked away sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Sophie. I told Parker as soon as I put it together about Lucy.”
“Lucy!” My eyes went wide. “Vlad, I’m sorry. I think—I think she’s dead. When I was with the chief, he threw me in his car and she was arguing with him. I heard a gunshot. I think he must have shot her.”
Parker leaned into me. “We’ll check into it, Sophie. Where did this happen? Up at Sampson’s place?”
I nodded. “Yeah, outside.”
Parker stepped over to one of the SWAT officers and told them about Lucy, asked them to check Sampson’s house for any traces of him. I shivered, wrapping my arms around my knees.
“It was terrible, hearing the sound of the gun. I know Lucy tried to kill me and … suck my blood, but, honestly, I hope she’s okay.”
Vlad frowned. “She tried to suck your blood?”
I rubbed at my neck. “It was more like a violent hickey; she didn’t even break the skin. She told me you wouldn’t change her.”
Vlad looked away from me, studied his shoes. “We do have rules.”
