Assassins Bite (7 page)

“You don't sound relieved.”

“Sure I am, sort of.”

He suddenly realized where this conversation was going. “
What
did you do?”

She winced. “Could you sound less like my stepmom scolding me? I just thought while you're in the area you could make yourself useful and…well, I assigned Sun-Hee to watch you.”

“To
track
me?” He practically growled it.

“No, you idiot, so you can keep her safe. Bo and I have too much on our plates to look after a stray immune human, and since you're around to do it—”

“You want me to protect a cop?” His anger died. Insanely, he felt like laughing. He didn't, of course, his training too ingrained. “You want me to protect a pugnacious cop
who doesn't want to be protected
?”

“And try not to let her know you're doing it.”

Aiden hit concrete steps. He was back at the cop shop.

He cast mournful eyes at the stars. “Why me?”

The stars only smiled.

Chapter Seven

I escaped Titus's scolding, smarting and mad. How could he ask me to spy on my hero? Inconceivable. And Elena wanted me to shadow the epitome of shadows. Impossible, much?

I was well and truly roto-rootered. As if being Ruffles wasn't enough.

I dug a hand into my hair. Problem was, I wanted to do Elena's job with my whole heart. But I knew it was bad for me, from a lifetime of sermons about the right thing being the hard thing.

Hard, like Blackthorne's body…
Rawr.

I smacked myself in the face. My heart wasn't the only thing that wanted to follow Blackthorne like a puppy dog…panting, barking, her tail wagging in the air… I stopped, thumbing my temples against a developing headache.

What to do? My duty was to protect my community.

Wait. Aiden Blackthorne, assassin, deadly vampire…unpaid parking ticket…was the most dangerous being in Meiers Corners! In fact, maybe that was why Elena asked me to watch him. She hadn't come right out and said it, but maybe she was saying it without saying it, like when she asked me about my Ruffles genes.

So I
could
investigate Blackthorne, dig into his background, tail him, arrest him, cuff him, interrogate him with my mouth…

I slapped a hand to my hot and sweaty forehead. Even I didn't believe me.

On the plus side, my headache was gone.

“Sunny?” My brother's voice floated down the hallway.

That pushed me into motion, if only to save my poor skin from another scalding. I ran for the front door.

“Sunny?” My brother's voice followed me. “Mom packed this neat cheese curd in my lunch that looks exactly like a turtle. Well, except that turtles are green, not orange. Sunny?”

He caught me four feet short. I plastered myself to the wall beside the doorway, imagining myself as a certain sexy shadow while my brother lumbered past. Hardly believing my good luck, I folded around the corner and slid out.

I clompity-clomped triple-time downstairs. The fresh air cleared my brain. Both Elena and Titus wanted me on patrol. So I'd go on patrol. If I happened to track down Aiden Blackthorne and make Elena proud, bonus.

As I kicked off, I pulled out my phone and started an Internet search for Dawn Truck Lines. Traditionally Ruffleses couldn't chew gum and think at the same time, much less walk, but I was a savant Ruffles and had mastered the art of bipedal multitasking. A little solid police work—non-Ruffles police work—netted me both phone number and the exact address of DTL, Thirteenth and Main.

Being the crafty investigator I was, I phoned to ask if Blackthorne was there.

A sensual female voice greeted me. “Kitty speaking. May I
help
you?” The purred emphasis left no doubt that “helping” would involve liberal rubbing of body parts.

I cleared my throat. “Is Aiden Blackthorne there?”

“
Oh
, yes. Aiden is here.” She extended the O with an
rgasm
, and caressed his name so intimately it made me want to drive pencils into my eyes. “He's bucking freight,” giving
bucking
a roll which made me want to stick the pencils in
her
eyes. “I'll have him
come
to the phone. May I tell him who's calling?”

I hung up.

So. He was there. While, yay, I'd overcome my Ruffles DNA to put in solid police work tracking Blackthorne down, boo, I'd left my car at home. Dawn Truck Lines was over a mile from the cop shop and though I can run a fifteen-minute mile, it wasn't in shoes that would double as clown cars. Hopefully bucking freight meant he was stuck loading and would be there for a bit.

I'd gone maybe a block when a warning ruffled my nape. I glanced over my shoulder, hoping for dark sexy shadows, but a guy in a lumpy butterscotch parka schlepped along behind me, talking on his phone. I sped up, springing a few drops of worry.

At the corner, I dropped south.

The guy dropped south too.

Throat tight, I sped up again.

The guy edged into a lope. Catching up.

My belly filled with acid. No Jonesy to back me up this time. If the Lumpy Parka attacked, I had two options—run or go nuclear.

Yes, I'm a cop and should have been able to impose my authority. But I'm small. While the stone can take several jabs from the pitcher, unless the pitcher wants to be broken and defenseless, it can only take one hit from the stone. If I can, I avoid or defuse the situation. But I only have one shot, so for me, it's off, or it's on.
Kicking and scratching, bones breaking…

We hit Fifth Street. I turned west.

He peeled off south toward Kangaroo Comics.

My heart gradually slowed. I was at an intersection doing my look-both-ways—it's a Meiers Corners thing—and my pulse was almost normal when the black sedan screeched up to, and nearly past, the four-way stop.

Face-to-face with the rear window, I thought I was looking into a mirror. Dark eyes confronted me. Oval face. Features hardened by the mirrored glass.

I looked so angry, so…feral.

Wait. The dark, short hair wasn't the bowl-bob cut I'd worn since kindergarten.

The resemblance shattered. The glass was a window, not a mirror. The woman's face wasn't mine—but I did recognize it. My first night as an RVPD cop, I'd memorized everything about the experience I could, including the Most Wanted posters. That was Elle Louise Smith, wanted for drug dealing, armed robbery and murder.

Shock sang through me. A murderer, here?

The sedan pulled forward, gathering speed. I pursued, clomping as fast as I could. “Stop! Police.”

The sedan signaled a right at the corner. The back door was within reach. I grabbed.

The car zoomed out from under my hand.

I put on a burst of speed. The sedan stopped at the next intersection. I got closer…it zoomed away.

I needed wheels.

My frantic gaze landed on a scooter, parked in a nearby driveway, keys in the ignition. What can I say? Meiers Corners. I hopped on, cranked the engine to life and wobbled a turn.

I lit out after the sedan. I got the hang of the scooter pretty quickly and soon was zipping along at well over the speed limit. Ahead of me, the black car was going even faster. I cranked the throttle. I didn't catch up but they didn't lose me either.

The sedan popped over the Adam's Street bridge and squealed into the Settler's Square band shell parking lot.

Elle Louise Smith emerged. Two men hopped out after her. She said, “Plan B is a go.” They scattered as I parked the bike. I hopped off to pursue Smith.

One of the men ran toward me on intercept. A thickly muscled dude with broken nose and cap that read “Thuggoh”, his face bore an identifying tattoo, a humped line like an
m
or double wave.

“Police.” I shot out my palm like a stop sign. “Hold it right there. You're with a known felon—hey!”

Thuggoh grabbed my extended wrist.

A quick twist freed me. “Cut that out. You're impeding an investigation by an officer of the law—”

“He's coming.” The second man stood near the municipal fountain, phone clapped to his ear. He wore an armband with the same symbol as Thuggoh's tattoo.

Thuggoh swept me into a bear hug, lifted me off my feet and lumbered forward. I struggled, kicking his shins and knocking his chest with my skull—but pitcher, stone. I only hurt myself. He dragged me toward the fountain, a concrete depression next to the band shell that functioned as a wading pool in summer but was drained in the winter.

Only it wasn't. It was full of water. All the hairs on my body rose.

“We need a scream,” Armband said.

Thuggoh squeezed my breasts.

My heart tripped into overtime. I was alone, in the grasp of the associate of a known murderer, and thanks to my clever patrol idea, no one knew where I was.

“Get the fuck off me!” I doubled my struggles. Unless things changed quickly, I was dead meat.

Aiden Blackthorne, by dint of sheer concentration and willpower, of which he normally had magnitudes but with Sunny's scent and feel and taste clamoring in his awareness he had barely enough to remember to breathe, managed to actually arrive at the Dawn terminal.

Inside, the building was divided front and back. The front door opened to a noise-filled room, humans and vampires clicking away at keyboards and the chatter of impact printers spooling out multi-part forms. The back had truck bays in the east, a loading platform in the middle, and to the west a short-term storage area and a locker room with showers.

Three trucks were currently at the loading dock, a couple of long-hauls and one city delivery. He put on leather gloves and joined in unloading. The work centered him and helped him feel more in control.

Until a trucker bumped into him and he realized he'd been standing there, picturing Sunny's face as she orgasmed for him.

Immediately he grabbed a stack of the heaviest boxes he could find. He was
not
savoring Sunny's scent or thinking about her lush lips or pretty breasts or soft
anything
. He tossed freight so fast he actually beaded up a sweat.

Then a bad feeling hit, so hard it bent him in two.

He jerked straight, alert for immediate danger. Nothing smelled or looked off, and around him, truckers continued to work. The biggest, a vampire named Elwood, raised a questioning brow at him.

Aiden shook his head, pulled out his phone and hit his only speed dial. If not here, then the problem was with Ric.

“Hello, asshole,” Ric Holiday answered, out of breath.

This was the boy who'd survived the hellhole of Nosferatu's assassin training camp with him. The friend whose pact meant he'd never assassinate again. They'd grown up—vampires became their ideal age, no matter how old when turned—and now Ric had an international business, a large human household, and was on his way to being Minneapolis's master vampire.

He also had a new bride and was constantly enjoying that fact—loudly, in bed. Aiden knew it wasn't particularly to annoy him, but he also knew Ric considered the annoyance a bonus.

So the panting was sitch normal. Aiden relaxed minutely. “Hello, fuck-face. How's your beautiful doctor?”

“Still pregnant. Finally over the puking. She got the residency she wanted.”

“Good. Maybe it'll keep her too busy for you two to behave like over-caffeinated bunnies.”

“Just wait until you find your mate. I'll be the one laughing then.”

“You'll be the one cringing.” But for some reason Aiden felt soft ripe grain and smelled sunshine.

An iron fist of foreboding hit his solar plexus, freezing his breath, his very heart.

Sunny
was in trouble, danger following her. “Damn it,” he gasped. Sucking air through his nostrils, he forced lungs and heart back into rhythm. “Elwood, I'm headed out.”

Ric's voice floated up from the phone. “What's wrong?”

Aiden pressed the phone to his ear as he settled into a ground-eating lope, destination the cop shop. “I have a bad feeling.”

“Damn it, now?” The
shht
of thrown covers came with Ric's voice. “I'll be there in five hours.”

Aiden was fiercely glad this male was his friend. “Using what, a rocket? Don't. Who'd protect Minneapolis? Besides, I could be wrong.”

“Your bad feelings are never wrong. I wish they were. Hole up, Aiden. I'll be on the first flight out.”

“It's not a problem with me.” Maybe Sunny was getting another coffee-dumping, or slipping on a jelly donut—nothing life-threatening. Still, he hurried. She might be in pain. He might need to lick it better.

“Is it Eloise?” Ric asked. “Did you meet with her?”

“No and no.”

“I knew something was off when you didn't call last night. Did Nosferatu find her?”

“Is he on your doorstep, threatening your humans? Is he trying to destroy you?”

“No.”

“Then he didn't find her.” Aiden passed Randy's Candies and Nieman's Bar, over halfway to the police station.

“I wish we'd never made that deal. But my humans are vulnerable. She was our only bargaining chip.”

Nosferatu wanted to destroy Ric and Aiden, but the old vampire had called a truce while they found his long-lost daughter—it had to be them because only a handful of people knew that she
was
his daughter. Once they found Eloise, Ric's humans would be dead, and the two of them would be back on Nosferatu's hit list, which was why Aiden had scheduled the meet last night.

Tonight he listened with half an ear, chafing to get to Sunny.

“You've almost got to feel sorry for the old bastard,” Ric said. “She's his weakness because he loves her.”

“His version of love, at any rate. Look, Ric, about Eloise…she tried to hurt me.”

There was a stunned silence. “
What
? How?”

“Silver bomb.” Aiden arrived at the police station. No sign of Sunny. He gave Ric a terse explanation as he scented for her, walking around the building, trying to pick up her trail.

“Come home,” Ric said when he'd finished. “We'll find another way to fend off Nosferatu.”

“Yes. No.” Aiden caught Sunny's scent going west and set off on it like a bloodhound. “I can't leave yet.”

“Why not?” Ric paused and Aiden could almost hear the clink as his friend's mind put the puzzle pieces together. “It's a
female
, isn't it? Immune to mind control by any chance?”

He and Ric had been friends too long. “Curiosity killed the cat—and severely maimed the annoying asshole.” Sunny's scent cut south. Aiden pushed faster.

“So I'm right.” Ric's tone held satisfaction. “Is this female a doctor?”

For some reason
female
grated. “
Sunny
is an excellent cop.”