I surveyed the dark service lane. There was never a convenient Dumpster when you needed one. I eyed the garbage cans, eyed Cain, sizing him up…
“So when do we fight?” he asked.
“What?”
“You know. Go mano a mano. Fight to the death. Your death, of course. I’m looking forward to enjoying the spoils.” His tongue slid between his teeth. “Mmm. I gotta thing for blondes with tight little asses, and your girl is fine. Bet she’ll fix up real nice.”
“Fix up?”
“You know. Get some makeup on. Get rid of that ponytail. Trade the jeans for a nice miniskirt to show off those long legs. You gotta keep after chicks about things like that or they get comfortable, let it slide. Not that she isn’t damned sweet right now, but with a little extra effort, she’d be really hot.”
I shook my head.
“What?” he said. “You’ve never tried?”
“Why would I?”
“Why
I opened my mouth, then shut it. Another waste of time. “So you think if you kill me, you get Elena?”
“Sure, why not?”
“If it didn’t require my death, I’d be tempted to go along with it, just to watch you tell her that.”
“Whatever.” He rolled on his heels. “Let’s get this over with. I’m hoping you brought your chainsaw, ’cause otherwise this fight isn’t going to be nearly as much fun as I was hoping, with your fucked-up arm and all.”
I stopped and then slowly looked up, meeting his gaze. “My arm?”
“Yeah, Brian McKay said you busted his balls last year for having some sport with a whore. He said something was wrong with your arm. You kept using your other one. Tyler Lake says he did it, as payback for what you did to his brother.”
“Yeah? Did he mention which arm it was? This one?”
I grabbed him by the throat and pinned him to the wall, hand tightening until his face purpled and his eyes bulged.
“Or was it this one?”
I slammed my fist into his jaw. Teeth and bone crackled. He tried to scream, but my hand against his windpipe stifled it to a whimper.
I dragged him down the wall until his face was level with mine and leaned in, nose to nose. “I’d say that will teach you not to listen to rumors, but you’re a bit thick, aren’t you? I’m going to have to-”
A thump to my left stopped me short. I glanced over as the back door to the restaurant swung open. We were behind it, a dozen feet away, out of sight. I held Cain still as I watched and listened, ready to drag him into the alley if a foot appeared under that door.
Garbage can lids clattered. They were right next to the door. No need to step outside. Just dump the trash-
Cain let out a high-pitched squeal-the loudest noise he could manage with a crushed windpipe. Then he started banging at the boarded-up window beside him. I tightened my grip, my glower warning him to stop. A foot appeared under that door, someone stepping out. I dropped the mutt and dove around the corner.
“Hey! You there!”
I pressed up against the wall. Footsteps sounded. A man yelled at Cain, mistaking him for a drunk. The mutt mumbled something about being jumped, struggling to talk with a broken jaw.
I gritted my teeth. Ending a fight by alerting humans was bad enough, but trying to set them on my trail? That toppled into full-blown cowardice.
I shook it off and retreated before someone came looking for the “mugger.”
Back in the restaurant, I longed to visit the washroom and scrub Cain’s stink off me, but I’d been gone too long already. So I grabbed a linen napkin from a wait station, wiped the blood from my hands as I strode through the dining room and tossed the cloth onto an uncleared table.
Elena looked up from the last bites of her meal.
“Hey there,” she said, smiling. “Thought you’d made a fast-food run on me.”
“Nah.” I took my suit coat from the chair and slipped it on, blocking the mutt’s smell and covering the blood splatter. “Something didn’t agree with me.”
“Lunch, I bet. That’s the thing about buffets-lots of food, none of it very good. So, is dessert out of the question?”
I shook my head. “Just give me a second to finish dinner.”
Our hotel was a few blocks from the restaurant, so we’d walked. To make sure she didn’t smell Cain on me, I had to stay downwind from Elena and keep a gap between us. She didn’t notice the extra distance. Neither of us was much for public displays of affection, so walking hand in hand wasn’t expected.
That only worked until we got to our room. She leaned against me as she pulled off her heels, then she ran her hand up the back of my leg, grinning upside down, hair fanning the floor. She swept it back as she stood, her hand sliding up my leg.
“Pizza now?” she asked. “Or after we work up an appetite?”
I took her hand from my leg, lacing my fingers with hers, elbow locked to keep her from getting too close.
“Hold that thought,” I said. “I’m going to grab a shower.”
Her brows shot up. “Now?”
“My problem at the restaurant? I’m thinking it might be something I rolled in this afternoon. My leg’s itching like mad. Let me scrub it off before I pass it along.”
Her head tilted, the freckles across her nose bunching as she studied me, her bullshit meter wavering. Normal-Elena would have called me on it, but honeymoon-Elena was struggling to avoid confrontations just as much as I was, so after a moment, she shrugged.
“Take your time. I’ll catch the news.”
I ran my hands through my hair and lifted my face into the spray. My forearm throbbed as the hot water hit it. Tomorrow I’d pay for overworking the damaged muscle, but it was worth it if Cain took home proof that Clayton Danvers’s arm was definitely
For two years, I’d been so careful in every fight, convinced no one would notice I was favoring my left. I should have known better. Like scavengers, mutts could sense weakness.
I squeezed the water from my hair as I moved out of the spray and looked down at the pitted rut of scar tissue. All these years of fighting without a permanent injury, and what finally does it? One little scratch from a rotting zombie. At the worst of the infection, I’d been in danger of losing my arm, so I couldn’t complain about some muscle damage.
But if rumors were already circulating, I had to squelch them. And maybe even that wouldn’t be enough. Was Theo Cain’s son only the first in a new generation of mutts who’d heard the stories about me and fluffed them off as urban legends or at least ancient history?
I’d first cemented my reputation to protect Jeremy. Now I had fresh concerns-a mate, kids… and a fucked-up arm that was never going to get any better. So how was I going to convince a new generation of mutts that Clayton Danvers really was the raging psychopath their fathers warned them about?
I rubbed the face cloth over my chest, hard and brisk enough to burn. I didn’t want to go through that shit again. What the hell would I do for an encore? What
