“Not a Redback?” Sunny asked. I shot her a black look.
“Not like Dmitri, no. No phasing at will. He was just strong, and fast, and…” Frightening. “A little crazy,” I finished.
Sunny spread her hands. “A pack you haven’t encountered before. A pack that’s extra strong.”
“No, it’s more than that,” I insisted. “It was like…” I sighed. The waiter set a glass of Merlot in front of Sunny, bloody and a little thick like a Merlot should be. The smell of the grapes overtook my nose and I coughed into my hand.
I couldn’t articulate what about Anton had scared me so, but it was more than a pack that was stronger than the average were. It was something primal that my were understood but I didn’t.
To understand it would be to allow the were to roam free again, and my life now was predicated on that not being the case. My job, Will, sitting here with my cousin instead of alone at home, because my rage wouldn’t let me be safe with other people.
“Luna, tell me about Will,” Sunny said, taking a long drink of her wine. “Tell me what happened.”
I laid my hands on the table and looked at them. My knuckles were scraped on the left, my nails scrimmed with dirt, and they shook a little, from being hungry and tired. “I need to go,” I sighed. “I need to get some sleep.”
“Luna…” Sunny started, reaching for me as I stood. I shook her off.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Sunny. Enjoy your Merlot.”
“Luna!” she snapped as I walked away. “Luna, you can’t turn your back on this! This is important. This is your life. ”
I looked at her over my shoulder. “Sure doesn’t feel that way sometimes, Sun.”
Leaving Vines, I drove home through a light mist, my headlights beams of dancing droplets, like gems. I rubbed my eyes before I shut off the Nova and locked it, making sure I had my bag of dirty clothes from work to take to the laundry, my laptop bag, my badge and gun, a few extra clips I’d left in the car.
My apartment doorway was a cocoon of light in the mist, and I walked toward it, feeling the weight of my bags and of the day lean heavy on me.
Footsteps sounded behind me, and I heard the drunken giggle of a college girl and the lower rumbling of her boyfriend’s voice as they turned into one of the bars on the next block.
What would I say to Will? How could he expect me to spend the rest of my life with him, when I couldn’t even spend one day without succumbing to the were?
Footsteps came again, and I felt air against my neck. I spun, my dirty laundry slipping out of my hands.
Victims who say things like It all happened so fast always sound like they weren’t aware, that they were caught flatfooted, but it did happen fast, too fast for me to see.
There was a touch against my throat, a hand sliding across my chest, two more figures out of the fog in front of me, a sting against my neck.
I didn’t smell or hear them. All I felt was the terrible cold in my blood, the one I knew all too well. Silver.
The entire right side of my body went numb from the kiss of it, and I felt my knees buckle. I fell to the sidewalk, twitching. What had they done to me? I’d never felt this way, not when I’d been drugged once before, not when I’d been hit with a silver round. It hurt, yes, but nothing like this.
This felt like dying.
As I lay there helpless, with no control over my body and only the haziest sense of what was happening to me, I heard a voice.
“Get her up. Nosy fucking cop has got a long trip ahead of her.”
CHAPTER 12
I fell through layers of cotton, the sting in my neck disappearing. It was strangely soothing … everything smoothed at the edges and sounds came to me from a distance, calming like waves on a black sand shore.
My gun, badge and holdout weapon were gone, their familiar weight light. Hands pulled at my clothes, palms a kiss of cold on my skin. Once they’d determined I wasn’t wearing a wire, they left me alone. I couldn’t care less. I floated down, landing gently on a rough automobile carpet, feeling lighter than air.
“Gods, Nikolai,” said a voice. “How much did you give her?”
“Enough for a were,” Nikolai said. “And she’s a bitch, believe me. She smacked me good when she came to my office.”
“Just get her into the van,” the second voice snapped. A woman. The quality-assurance portion of the prostitution ring, no doubt. Trust a woman to judge a woman. “You’re less than worthless, you know that? What if she dies on me?”
“She’s a cop who came into my business asking all kinds of fucking questions,” Nikolai growled. “Questions that are troublesome. You’d be starring in a remake of Caged Heat right now if it wasn’t for me.”
I drifted out then, coming back to myself with the rumbling of an engine running through my body. Dimly, I wondered how long it would take Will and the SCS to find me. Tomorrow morning, later? How long before someone like me was missed, and not just a relief not to have around?
The engine stopped and the door opened. I was hauled out, stumbling like a prom date on spiked punch, and dropped next to other warm bodies that I felt but didn’t see, my vision blurring in gentle waves. There were other women around me, halos of light softening their features as my drugged eyes struggled to focus.
Will would find me. Will would miss me. I just wanted to sleep,
