[Kassandra Lyall Preternatural Investigator 03] - Bloody Claws (22 page)

Lenorre touched my cheek tenderly, bringing me back to myself. "I will get your clothes from the hall," she said, pulling me close and kissing the top of my head. I wrapped my arms around her, trying to relax.

"This isn't just about me, is it?" I asked her.

I felt Lenorre softly shake her head. "No, my love, it is not."

And it wasn't. It may have initially been about the sex accident and Rosalin's loneliness, but it was so much more than that. How had I not seen it before it happened? Carver himself had said that Rosalin had endured worse at Sheila's hands than this. I knew there was a well of sorrow inside Rosalin that she didn't show anyone. I'd seen it back around Thanksgiving when she'd broken down over the loss of her parents and admitted that the holidays depressed her.

And when we'd first met, I'd seen the scars on her back, scars I knew had been Sheila Morris's doing, though Rosalin never told me truthfully what happened.

She never talked about Sheila torturing her.

I rarely hate, but standing in Rosalin's room with her induced in a sort of vampiric coma, I felt hatred. I felt hatred toward Sheila for taking this beautiful woman that life had already been unkind to and showing her ugliness and cruelty; hatred toward an alpha that took her own history of abuse out on the innocents in her pack.

There was light in Rosalin, a beautiful light. I saw it when she laughed and when she smiled, and though she'd broken down in November, something had changed in her since then, something I hadn't seen until it was too late.

Sheila had buried Rosalin alive, but what else she may have said or done remained a mystery to me.

I had an image then of Sheila, so strong that it superimposed Rosalin's bedroom. I saw her face close to mine and her mouth shaping lies, disgusting, cruel lies.

"No one wants you."

I reached out, bracing a hand on the wall.

"Kassandra." It was Zaphara's voice. I turned to find her in the doorway. "What were you looking at?"

"Nothing."

She came to me, reaching up to touch my face. "Liar. You saw something."

I looked back toward the bed and Rosalin's sleeping form. "I don't know if it was real or not."

"Tell me."

"I saw Sheila Morris. She was abusing Rosalin."

"You had an impression," Zaphara said. "Chances are it is true."

When Lenorre returned, I put my slacks on as if in a daze, tugging the Two Points T-shirt down over them. The slacks smelled as if they'd been washed, which wouldn't have surprised me.

"What happened?" Eris asked from the doorway.

"You didn't hear it?" I asked.

"I was down in the basement," Eris said. "Is she all right?"

"No," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "No, she's not."

"I've finished the spell," Zaphara said.

"We have not the time to perform the summoning," Lenorre said. "It will be dawn soon and I want to be present when it happens."

Zaphara nodded.

"I'll call Arthur and let him know it's been postponed until tomorrow," I said. If he had a problem, well, he could kiss my ass.

Lenorre shook her head, curls swaying at her waist. "I will contact the detective. Stay here with your wolf."

I touched her wrist. Lenorre came to a halt and met my gaze. There was a sorrow in her that I hadn't seen.

"Will you come back?" I asked.

The back of her fingers swept across my cheek. "I will come lay with you and your wolf until sunrise," she said.

"Thank you."

"There's a hole in the wall," Eris said. "Rosalin's doing?"

"Yes."

"Poor thing."

I shot her a disapproving glance. "She doesn't need pity, Eris. She needs compassion."

Eris shrugged as if to say,
I'm not going to argue with you
. It was probably a wise decision, considering my current temperament.

I crawled into bed beside Rosalin, nestling my body in against hers. Zaphara surprised me by climbing in between Rosalin and the wall.

Lenorre returned, and closed my cell phone then placed it on top of Rosalin's dresser. She placed herself beside me, wrapping an arm around my waist and spooning me while I held Rosalin.

"I see there isn't any room left for me," Eris said, sounding more amused than disappointed. "I'll bid you good night and claim one of the rooms downstairs for the morning."

Zaphara sat up, a trickle of energy rising in the form of a dark mist. When the mist lowered, Zaphara shook her furry head, as if shaking it off her. She rose to her paws in wolf form and moved to the foot of the bed where she settled down across our feet. The warmth of her fur was a welcoming thing and so I slipped my feet up under her, kicking her lightly. Zaphara grumbled her protest, but didn't make a move to stop me from using her as a foot warmer. Eris had changed her clothes and let her hair down. A loose white tunic covered her torso, falling just below her waist over a pair of dark leggings. She lowered herself into the spot Zaphara had left for grabs, her arm finding a place over Rosalin's still form.

Lenorre buried her face against the back of my neck. The rhythm of her breath lulled me to sleep.

CHAPTER
twenty-Four

 woke to a cold, wet nose. A low rumble sounded and a snout bumped my face again. I put a hand out, lightly covering that persistent snout with my palm.

I pushed and Zaphara's furry weight hit the floor beside the bed. I rolled over, shoved my arm back under the pillow and tried to cling to sleep. The next thing I knew, I was clawing at the pillow, trying to find something to hold on to while Zaphara forcefully yanked me out of bed by my pant leg. My hands slapped down on the carpet and I turned and growled.

Zaphara had a mouthful of my slacks and was literally dragging me across the floor.

"Zaphara! I'm up! Good Gods!"

She shook her head, growling over the mouthful of my pants she had just about pulled off me. I rolled, grabbing the material at my waist and holding my pants up while Zaphara continued to drag me.

I yelled her name again and she didn't stop, continuing to drag me toward Rosalin's bedroom door.

"Carpet burn!" I exclaimed, my elbows taking the brunt of the abuse. "Zaphara, fucking stop! I'm awake!"

She stopped in front of the door, releasing me and sitting back.

Her ears went back against her skull. "
Must I drag you the rest of the way? Get up."

"You're a pushy bitch in the morning."

She snapped at me and I snapped back, whether it looked strange on my human face or no.

I got to my feet, pulling the waist of my pants back where they belonged.

"Where's Rosalin?" I asked, spotting the empty bed. I was sure Eris and Lenorre had retreated to the protection of the lower levels of the house to die when the sun rose. I went to the curtained window and peeked out. The gold, crimson, and orange sky let me know that I'd slept all day and that the sun was beginning to set.

"She's in the dining room downstairs."

So she was, sitting at the table with a mug of hot tea between her hands. The curtains over the windows in the dining room were drawn, blocking out any remaining threads of sunlight. I followed the smell of coffee into the kitchen and found a mug hanging on a rack above the coffee maker. I added a careless teaspoon of demerara sugar and milk.

"When did you wake up?" I asked, leaning against the frame of the doorway that was usually curtained off between the kitchen and dining room.

"Not long ago," she said.

"How are you?" I asked.

"All right, I guess. What happened last night?"

I sat in the seat beside her and took a long drink of coffee. "You don't remember?"

"Bits and pieces," she said.

I wasn't sure what Lenorre had done to her. I didn't think she'd done to Rosalin what she'd once done to Arthur, taking any memory of his interaction with her. But I didn't know if she had used her powers to cloud any of Rosalin's memories.

"What do you remember?"

"You," she said. "I was upset with you. You still smell like Eris and Lenorre, so I'm guessing that's why."

"So you remember the fight we had in the hallway?"

"Vaguely."

I put my hand over hers on the table, noticing that she was being cold toward me and not liking it. Rosalin looked down at my hand.

"Are you still upset with me?"

"No," she said. "What you do with your personal life isn't my business."

What the hell had Lenorre done to her? This was not the Rosalin I knew. Her eyes seemed shadowed, making them darker than they normally were. Her face was blank and emptier than I'd ever seen it. I couldn't recall ever seeing Rosalin with a blank expression. Her face was always alive with whatever she was feeling or thinking. But this…was it Lenorre's doing, or had something in her just closed down? Shut off?

I drew a long breath, trying to put a hand over my emotions. "Rosalin, what can I do?"

"You can't do anything, Kassandra. You can't fix me."

"Rosalin," my voice was soft, "there isn't anything about you that needs to be fixed. You're perfect just the way you are. You've been through a lot. I just want to help you through it."

"I woke with your head on my shoulder," she said.

"Does it bother you that I slept with you?"

She was silent for several moments before she shook her head and said, "No, I'm thankful for it. There's a hole in the wall outside my bedroom door. Did I do that?"

"Yeah."

"And Lenorre," she said. "I remember her. I remember begging her to take my pain. She took it, didn't she?"

"You asked her to help you and she did what she could."

"She should've taken that memory."

"Which one? The one where you threw your head against the wall?"

"No." She sighed heavily, her shoulders rounding forward as she hunched over her tea. "I went down to the library to help Zaphara, but she didn't really need my help. So I came back up and waited on the steps outside the parlor."

"You'd said you heard everything. I'm sorry, Ros. I didn't do it to hurt you."

"I know," she said. "I was just…" A tremble of a breath emitted from her, shaking her shoulders. "I need, Kassandra. I feel so lonely.

My heart aches, and I'm not sure anymore that I know what it aches for. I don't want to lose you. I don't want to push you away, but I feel like I'm losing my grip. I didn't stay with the pack because I had to. I stayed with them because it fills something inside of me that needs to be filled, Kassandra, and I'm lost without it."

"I'm not going anywhere, Ros. I'm right here."

"I need you to accept me as your wolf. If I can't be your lover, then please, Kassandra, accept me as your beta. Accept the fact that you're an alpha and stop running from this. I can't fight this many internal battles. I've fought this blackness inside of me for years and I can't do it alone. I can't do it without some semblance of a pack and a place where I belong. Just when I think the light's returning, something eclipses it."

"An eclipse doesn't last forever," I said. "It'll shine again if you let it, but you can't feed the beast of darkness and expect to conquer it with sympathy."

"Kassandra," she said, searching my face. "Can you do this?"

"Be your alpha?"

"Accept yourself. Accept those of us you've claimed."

I thought about Sheila. I thought about the vision I'd had of her and all the harm she'd inflicted on those around her. I especially thought about the harm I didn't know about. The secrets hushed within the pack.

"Yes."

"Give me your oath."

"You have it."

The muscles in her shoulders went slack as she slumped with relief over her tea. She whispered the words, "Thank you."

"May I hug you without landing on my ass?"

Rosalin raised her head, giving me a smile that was both sad and sweet. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

She rose from her chair and folded her arms around my neck. I slipped mine around her waist, holding her close and feeling the fall of her hair against my cheek, feeling her heart beating against mine through our chests. "How can you make me smile when I feel like I don't have any left?"

"It's something friends do," I said, stepping back. "At the risk of potentially ruining the moment, can I ask you something?"

The look she gave me was wary. "I guess…"

Goddess knows, I didn't want to ask the question I was about to, but in some part of me, I knew I had to.

"You're really not in love with me, are you?"

Rosalin was quiet for several moments, long enough that it unsettled me, long enough that I was afraid of her answer, afraid I had been wrong in thinking she was just looking for something in the wrong place.

"No, no, I don't think so," she said at last. "I mean, I love you, but
in
love?" She shook her head, auburn strands clinging to her cheeks. She raised a hand and pushed the hair out of her face. "No, and I think that's what frightens me the most."

At that, I raised my brows. "That you're not in love with me?" Surely, that was a good thing?

"That I'm not in love with someone," she said.

An awkward silence wrapped around us. I really didn't know what to say. What was there to say? Hey, I hope you find someone? It seemed a bit cold, even to me.

I sighed. "I don't know what to tell you, Ros. You know I want to see you happy."

"I know," she said, her voice soft. After another awkward pause, she changed the subject, "Lenorre should be waking. Are you going to feed her?"

"Maybe. If Zaphara hasn't already. I'm still not sure leaving you alone is a good idea."

"You don't need to babysit me."

"I'm not," I said. "Well, not in the way you're probably thinking. I'm feeling protective, that's all."

"So you're inviting me to tag along?"

I didn't know how I felt about Rosalin going downstairs with me when Lenorre had just woken for the night, especially if I was going to be the one offering to open a vein, but I really didn't want to leave her alone again. Something in the pit of my stomach, especially after this morning's display, told me it wasn't the brightest idea.

"Would you like to accompany me?"

She made a sound that was almost a laugh. "That sounds more like something Lenorre would say," she said. "Next you'll have matching T-shirts."

"What do you mean?"

Rosalin smiled. "You're starting to sound like her.
Would you like to accompany me, daaaah-ling?
" She said that last bit in a horrible impersonation of Lenorre's accent.

I shook my head, trying not to laugh. "You're a little heavy on that
dah-ling
," I said.

"Darling,"
Lenorre's voice sounded behind me and I about jumped out of my pants, sloshing coffee onto the tiled floor. "Kassandra is correct. I don't drawl."

She stepped into the room wearing a pair of slinky red silk pajamas. Her long hair was secured with a black ribbon. She placed a light kiss against my temple. "Good evening, love."

"Good evening," I said, reaching out to play a hand over her hip. I withdrew, remembering that Rosalin was still in the room with us and not wanting to feel like I was flaunting or throwing my relationship with Lenorre in her face. I wouldn't stifle myself, but Rosalin's wounds were too fresh and I didn't want to feel like I was throwing salt in them. I'm not a sadist, after all.

Lenorre seemed to understand, remaining close to me but not being overly touchy-feely or affectionate.

"Have you fed?" I asked.

"I was waiting for you."

Apparently, Zaphara wasn't on the menu. For her to have been waiting, she must've woken very recently. There were times when she woke riding the lust for blood, but those were few and far between. As there were certain triggers that flipped on my literal bitch switch, there were triggers that awakened Lenorre's hunger. Foreplay before she died at dawn was one of those. The bodily lust not being slaked channeled into the bloody kind when she woke.

"Where is Zaphara?" I asked. "I haven't seen her since she literally dragged me out of bed."

"She is in the library making sure all is in order."

I'd almost forgotten about the necklace Astrid had given me at the police station. I still couldn't really fathom why she'd given it to me and Lenorre hadn't let me handle it to find out. If Astrid and her daughter were part fey, I wasn't opposed to Zaphara checking it. Which, I presumed, Lenorre had given the necklace to Zaphara for that reason. Jewelry, like the symbol on the wall at the Blevins's, could be charged and spelled.

I felt Lenorre watching me and knew that she needed to feed.

"Do you know if Carver and Claire are still here?" I asked Rosalin.

"You'd sense them if they were," she said.

"With or without trying? I haven't tried to sense them."

"More like a gut instinct kind of thing, but you'd sense it more if you tried."

"So they're not here," I said as she raised her cup to her lips and took a drink.

I went into the kitchen to get a washcloth to wipe my spilled coffee off the floor, wondering what to do with Rosalin.

"Trevor and Isabella are here," Lenorre said.

"Trying to find someone to babysit me?" Rosalin asked. "I told you, I don't need a sitter."

"With everything that's been going on, Rosalin, we're just being protective. Will you let us?"

"Fine," she said.

"I'm not confident in Trevor, and I don't really know Isabella." Trevor also still belonged to Sheila, which made me feel rather distrusting of him. My goal was to keep Rosalin safe and feeling safe. Trevor helped neither of those causes. He was too weak, and although Isabella was one of Lenorre's Prime vampires, I didn't know her well enough to trust her.

"Would it bother you if Rosalin came downstairs with us?" I asked Lenorre.

"I am more worried about it bothering you."

"Will it bother you?" I asked Ros.

"No, not unless you start doing the hanky-panky and even then-"

I held up a hand. "Please don't finish that last bit."

We made it to Lenorre's bedroom and I sat at the foot of the bed. Rosalin chose to sit at the head of the bed, reclining back against the pillows.

"Just make yourself comfortable, Ros."

She smiled at me widely enough to reveal her perfectly white teeth. "Oh, I am."