Bitten to Death

“I need to talk to you,” I growled, realized how that would sound to Trayton, and cleared my throat. “Uh”—I looked over my shoulder—“I noticed you weren’t really into the Were-fighting while it was going on.”

Niall allowed some distance to grow between us and the dining room before he answered. “I feel the same for my Trust as you do for your job. I imagine we have both done things we prefer not to in order to preserve our place in the order of things.”

A-fricking-men. “You understand our contract?”

“I believe so.”

“Okay, well, under its terms you’re required to help us do everything we can to bring Samos down.”

Niall looked amused, as if I’d begun to tickle him under the chin and talk like a baby. “I would hope so.”

“In a roundabout way, this next favor I’m about to ask of you fits under that provision. Because if you don’t help, your Trust could be in big trouble, which would weaken it to the point where Samos might be able to do you from a distance. And if he doesn’t have to show for a face-to-face, we’re screwed.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

We’d reached the suite by now. I took him inside, sat him on one of the library chairs, and put myself between him and the bedroom doorway. “Vayl and I couldn’t allow the Weres to be killed.”

“Of course not.”

“Excuse me?”

“I was planning to speak to them later tonight.”

“Niall, I know you helped trap them.”

He dropped his head. “When the Deyrar orders . . . you obey. She knew I wished to deny her. But she’d called Admes to stand beside her at the time. Within reach of those razor-sharp—” He looked up, as if realizing he’d almost let a state secret slip. “I promised myself I would find a way to make it right afterward.”

“Well, you waited too long. She sent Rastus to cap them.”

“Cap?” He shook his head. “I don’t—”

“Kill.” You goddamn old fart! “I helped Kozma, the werebear, escape in time. But the wolf was shot.” I grabbed Niall’s hand and pulled him out of the chair. “He says you can help him.”

“He knows me?”

“Your scent anyway. He’s full of silver,” I said as I led Niall toward the bedroom. “Do you know how to extract it?”

“Of course. My power centers around the moon-changers.” As soon as we crossed the threshold to the bedroom he stopped so suddenly he jerked me back into him.

He took maybe three seconds to process the sight of Trayton resting on my brown pima cotton sheets with their gold chalice border. Then he closed the door so hard it actually shook, setting his shoulders against it, as if an army was about to take a battering ram to the other side.

“I thought we were coming in here for a jacket and car keys. So you could take me to where you were hiding him—in the woods perhaps. But he’s here. In. The. Trust. Are you insane?” Niall demanded in a stage whisper.

I started to laugh. And couldn’t stop. It became the most hilarious question anyone had ever asked me. Niall didn’t get it, of course. As I held my aching stomach and tears rolled down my face, he went to Trayton and studied his wound, which I’d bandaged with a handful of Armor All wipes and some electrician’s tape I’d found in the garage. Hey, somebody else could worry about infection. My job was to figure out how to keep the guy from leaving a trail for his would-be killers to follow.

“Trayton’s my—” I stopped. “Just fix him, Niall. Otherwise the contract is void and Vayl and I will get Samos on our own.”

He stared at the armoires, seeing beyond the wood and the walls behind them, struggling with the fears that skittered across his face like the bugs that frequent cesspools and murder scenes.

“All right,” he said finally, his shoulders slumping wearily. “I’ll do what I can.” He bent over the Were, his power rising as he moved. The Vampere called this central ability a cantrantia. And I felt it like a shifting inside my bones. It grew out from him, a primal force that made me check to make sure I had a wall at my back.

I watched him pour that power into Trayton, who jumped as if he’d been shocked. Immediately his wound began to bubble, first red, then silver, as the toxins from the bullet bled out of him. He clutched at the mattress and bit his bottom lip as the pain rocked him.

Shit! I wrapped my hands around my stomach, which didn’t like this show any more than my noodly knees did. How had I allowed this to happen? The last guy who’d tried to lick my hand had ended up dead on the floor of an abandoned warehouse thirty seconds later. Of course, he’d been a psychotic mail bomber who’d worked his way up the federal employee ladder to the secretary of state before we’d finally nailed him. But still.

Niall looked up to find me watching him. “We need something to wipe this off. Tissues. A towel. Quickly,” he urged. “This will burn back into his skin if I don’t remove it at once.”

I dove into the cabinet under the bathroom sink, hiking supplies at Niall like the center for the Cleveland Browns. Finally he said, “That will do.”

“So, you must enjoy a cantrantia that allows you to control Weres, huh?” I said as I came back into the room. “You’ve probably thought about starting your own little slave colony with that kind of power. Or at least a booming betting ring.”

Not fair, snapped Granny May from her bridge table at the front of my brain. For this game she’d partnered with Running Bull against Doctor Who and Darwin. While Darwin nodded in agreement she continued, He’s helping and you pull out the smartass on him?