Hunted By The Others (11 page)

She looked pale and drawn, about as good as I felt. “Royce did a pretty good job of backing you into a corner.”

I cleared my throat and looked away, knowing she wouldn’t like this part of my idea. Steeling myself against the shivers wracking me at the thought of what I was about to do, I bowed my head over the coffee cup and took a deep breath before I answered.

“I think I can win my way out of this, but I’d really need your help to do it.”

Her gaze shot over to me, the abject fear and desire to help I saw etched on her features not making me feel any better about what I was going to ask of her.

She said, “If it’ll get you out of this mess, I’ll do anything. How can I help?”

“You’re much more versed in contract law than I am. That’s what I need your help with. I can sign the papers, but I need you to doctor them first.” I could see her incredulousness and went on the defensive. “Look, it’s just an idea. You don’t have to go along with it. Just hear me out.”

She was forcing herself to relax, taking a few deep breaths before nodding for me to continue. She tried hiding her expression behind her coffee mug as she took a sip, but I caught the look of displeasure that crossed her face. I knew it went against her morals, but this was the only chance I could see to get out of the hole I’d dug for myself.

Gesturing at the contract in her hand, I stared right into her baby blue eyes, holding her gaze so I wouldn’t lose my resolve.

“Word it so that it swings both ways so I can injure or kill Royce with impunity.”

She choked on her coffee. “What?!”

“You can do it. I know you know how. I’ll help you reword it and we can print a new document that looks just like this one, except tweaked enough so that instead of it reading like a living will and me being completely under his thumb, it’ll go both ways. It won’t take much to do it, and I doubt Royce will read it once I deliver the signed copy. All he’ll look for is my signature on the last page.”

Papers usually read like you were signing over your body, mind and soul, mostly because some of the Others couldn’t feed without taking one or more of those things from a human in the process. It was so tightly regulated because, like any other citizens, Others needed to be held responsible for their actions up to and including emotional distress, stalking, and assaulting or killing a human in a frenzy of passion, anger, hunger, or whatever it was that drove them. The mystery I’ve yet to figure out is why people sign the papers letting them do those things in the first place. I mean, I know the Others don’t want to be hunted down and exterminated, but why would a rational human being willingly agree to something sucking their blood or initiating them into the world of the terminally furry?

Anyway, generally the contracts read that the Other could destroy your will, drink every last drop of blood in your body, and rip you to itty bits in the process, and they are considered free and clear from all wrongful death suits. These days, when they could get away with it, they also added in a clause giving immunity from any lawsuits that might result from turning the person with irreparable damage. After that suit last year, when some kid who had been left for dead turned Were without a hand, facial scarring, and a horrific chunk of flesh taken out of his arm, and sued the pants off the pack of the Were who infected him, any human who would sign a full immunity pre-/post-death clause was considered a highly prized commodity among the more feral Others.

In addition to all of that, if you (permanently) died while under contract, all material possessions were turned over to the “partner” if you failed to turn into an Other. Most of the time, the agreements were not worded to work both ways. Meaning, if I signed the document as is and I survived an attempt to kill or hurt Royce, I’d get thrown in jail, and my shares in H&W and my apartment and belongings would get turned over to him. But if this worked out the way I was thinking and I was successful, killing him instead, everything he owned would fall into my possession. It would also leave me free of any assault charges or wrongful death suit that might be brought against me for trying to kill an Other without a valid warrant.

It also gave me leverage to get him to just leave me the hell alone. While he was powerful, much more powerful than me, physically and otherwise, vampires don’t live as long as Royce had without having a strong sense of self-preservation. If he thought of me as a threat, he’d back off. With the contract worded to my benefit and the addition of the stakes to urge him to reconsider, this just might work. Not to mention if I got Royce to back down, it would more than likely cause The Circle to back off as well. They’d hopefully see me as more trouble than I’m worth.

I could see that Sara wasn’t happy with the idea, though she knew the dangers of signing the contract as it was, ignoring it entirely, or doing things my way. Probably better than I did. Still, I understood what I was asking her to do. If it ever got out that she did such a thing, she could be disbarred, fined, probably jailed, and lose her reputation as a fair and law-abiding citizen. She wouldn’t look at me when she finally spoke.

“Shia, I know I’m not a practicing lawyer, but I could lose my license over this. It could destroy the reputation of H&W. We may lose the business over this.”

I took a deep breath before answering, keeping my voice quiet and level so I wouldn’t betray my own feelings about the whole mess.

“I know. Believe me, I know. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Isn’t my life worth more than the business?”

I didn’t have to say it, and I felt horrible for even letting the words cross my lips, but without Sara’s help, I’d never survive this nightmare.

Eventually, she managed to drag her gaze from the ground to meet my eyes again, looking more drawn and pale than I’d ever seen her before.

“I’ll do it. This once, I’ll do it. But don’t ever, ever ask anything like this of me again.”

I nodded agreement, breathing a deep sigh of relief. With that out of the way, now I just needed to figure out how I could make an ancient vampire view me, a normal human, a woman, food, as a threat.

Chapter 15

I slept fitfully on the couch in Sara’s living room. She had guest bedrooms, but I wanted to be woken up if the dogs started barking at any intruders. After a little more talk and planning, she’d gone upstairs to work on the contract on her computer. I didn’t envy her having to retype the whole thing, not only that but then having to use her skills to edit the document just enough that Royce and I could legally go for each other’s throats without worry of legal interference.

I stared at the ceiling for a while, finally drifting off a little past midnight. Then I scared the crap out of myself when I rolled off the couch onto the floor in the middle of the night in the throes of a nightmare. The bruise on my hip from landing on my keys did not improve my mood one bit. The dogs barked for almost fifteen solid minutes, too. Thankfully, Sara must have figured there was no problem since she didn’t come down to check on me and grind my embarrassment home any further.

Two nights in a row of too little sleep didn’t make it any easier to answer Sara’s cheerful “G’mornin’” when she came downstairs around eight o’clock. Muttering darkly under my breath, I dragged myself off the couch and followed her into the kitchen, blearily watching her make coffee, scramble eggs, and toast bagels for breakfast.

“Hey, it’s Sunday,” she said.

I didn’t say anything, just stared back for a minute before riveting my gaze on the Mr. Coffee. I really, really wanted my caffeine fix.

“Sunday,” she said, grinning at my lack of response, “as in, it’s Damien’s birthday and we’re both expected at your mom’s house in a few hours.”

I started, practically jumping out of the seat I’d slumped into at the kitchen table. “Holy crap! It’s that Sunday?”

Dismayed, I looked at the clock on the microwave. I wouldn’t have enough time to get the gift from my apartment, shower, change clothes, call The Circle, and explain to Veronica why I was reneging on the contract while still making it to the party on time.

“Yup.” She shook the spatula at me threateningly. “Don’t even think about it. Deal with work tomorrow. Today’s supposed to be your day off anyway.”

I slid back into the chair, running my hands through my hair in agitation. Well, as much as I could with the unbrushed, tangled curls.

“It’s not just that. I need to get Damien’s gift. It’s in my closet at home.”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t. Not since the White Hats broke in the other day. If they’ve been watching you, they may have tried something drastic since you met with Royce again.”

Damn it all to hell and back, I’d forgotten about them. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any bright ideas for that, too?”

“Well, sure. We can swing by the mall on the way over to your mom’s.”

I meant the White Hats, but her idea to handle my brother’s gift made me feel a bit better. Though I soon remembered the contract, my not-quite-good mood shattering. “Did you finish with the papers last night?”

“No, not yet. I have to tweak the fonts and cut out a little of the wording to make it all fit right and say what we want it to say but still look enough like the old contract to pass a casual inspection.”

I nodded, wondering miserably how I was going to stand up to Royce. I quivered just at the sight of him, let alone his fangs. What would I do if he actually jumped at my throat?

“Do you really think he’ll just lodge them with the court without looking at them?”

She laughed at the worry in my voice. “Of course. Nobody but lawyers ever wants to read this kind of stuff. The form he used was really cookie-cutter, too.”

That made me wonder how she was familiar enough with this type of contract to know that it was cookie-cutter. “You’ve worked on these before?”

“Yeah,” she said, looking more sheepish than I’ve ever seen her. Was that a touch of red in her cheeks? “I took a job for a Were about six months ago. She thought her contract partner was cheating on her with another Were and wanted to know what he was up to. Turns out he was cheating, just not with another Were. She wanted to know what her rights were, so she showed me the fill-in-the-blanks standard form they had signed. I helped her a little since the guy she was dating was scum and I felt bad about having to break the news.”

Gross. I made a face and shook my head. “You pick the weirdest jobs.”

“Heh, yeah, I guess I do.” She grinned, plucking the hot bagels from the toaster. “Trust me, he’ll just look for your signature. You’re going to have to act
really
reluctant to hand them over if he’s going to believe you’ve given in, though.”

“That should be the easy part. I
am
reluctant to hand them over.”

The coffeemaker beeped. Finally. I rinsed out our mugs from last night and poured fresh coffee into both, picking through the cabinets, drawers, and fridge to get spoons, sugar, and cream. After fixing up our drinks, I handed one over to Sara before settling back into my seat at the table with a mug cradled in my cold hands.

Relaxing back into the chair, I shut my eyes, only to be startled by the earsplitting sound of one of the dogs going mental right under the window next to me. Some of the coffee sloshed over onto my hands, dragging a pained curse out of me as I sucked my burning fingers into my mouth.

“Shut up, Buster!” Sara shouted, handing me the spatula on her way to the front door. “It’s probably just the paper.”

I got up to tend to the stove, alternately sucking the fingers of one hand while poking and prodding at the eggs with the other. Sara walked back in a minute later, ashen and pale.

“Shia, what was the name of that woman from The Circle you met on Thursday?”

I glanced back at her over my shoulder, wondering at the slight waver to her voice. “Veronica. Veronica Wright. Why?”

She tossed the paper down next to the stove. I dropped the spatula and grabbed the paper, reeling in shock.

MAGE FOUND MURDERED!!!
ARE THE OTHERS AT WAR
? screamed the headline splashed across the front page. Right above Veronica’s smiling picture.

Chapter 16

I didn’t have much of an appetite, but I picked at the eggs Sara set down in front of me. I don’t even remember staggering to a seat, but somehow I managed it.

Whatever the cops found must have been pretty bad for the papers to jump on it that quickly. Apparently a neighbor complained about some strange sounds coming from Veronica’s apartment late last night. When the police showed up to investigate and no one answered the door, they busted in and found her body, mutilated and drained of blood. No witnesses and no leads except that it “looked like an Other attack.”

Of all the Others, magi were the closest relations to fullblood humans, according to the hematologists who had done studies. Despite that, any high school kid could tell you that we were still so fundamentally, biologically different that it was almost impossible for us to interbreed. Not impossible, but almost. We weren’t the same species, though we were closer in physical similarities than to once-human Weres or vampires.

Vampires used to be human, but like Weres, what turned them was a magically enhanced virus. It made them both completely different, biologically and metaphysically, even while, for the most part, retaining the physical structure that let them appear nearly human.