Taken by the Others (15 page)

O’Donnell didn’t look much better than me. There was blood streaked on his nice blue uniform and on his hands. I only noticed since he gestured at the duffel on the bed. “What are you doing?”

“Getting ready to leave. I need to call someone, then I have to go.”

He put on his cop face. It isn’t as impressive when you look like you’re on the verge of having hysterics. “You can’t just walk out of here. There’s going to be questions; nobody knows what happened to you last night. Besides, don’t you want to get your car out of the impound? One of the meter maids found it on the street yesterday and had it towed. Grady and I caught ten kinds of hell for leaving you to go chase that speeder.”

I groaned, slapping my forehead and making the short length of chain on the cuff jingle. Silly me, I’d forgotten about my car. “Crud, yeah. Okay, I’ll stick around long enough to answer questions. I’ll have to pick up the car later.”

Some of the immediate panic left his face. His relief would have been comical if I wasn’t so pissed off right now. “It may be better if you wait with the wolf.”

I nodded and picked up the duffel, walking out into the living room. Chaz was huddled where we’d left him in the kitchen. His head was on his paws, and half-lidded eyes were watching the doorway to my bedroom; a hulking mass of muscle and fur strong enough to tear through the walls to find me if he had a mind for it. His ears perked up but otherwise he didn’t move.

I tossed the bag next to the shattered door and sat down on the kitchen tile, leaning against Chaz’s uninjured side. He gave a rumbling sound of contentment when I rubbed the soft fur between his ears. He used to scare the hell out of me when he was shifted. After all the time we’d spent together, not to mention his saving my life, it was easier to be tolerant.

O’Donnell stayed in the bedroom, using his walkie-talkie to let the other officers know it was safe to come up and to put their weapons away. I wondered darkly which one of them had shot my boyfriend. My threat of a lawsuit earlier wasn’t idle. I’d make it a point to note down their names and badge numbers for use later.

“Don’t get up when the rest of the cops come in. One of them shot you, right?”

Chaz lifted his head just enough to nod, then twisted slightly to look at me. It was a pain in the butt he couldn’t talk.

“I have a question. This is important. Did the guy who shot you already have silver bullets or did he switch out his ammo after you shifted? Did he come prepared?”

Chaz blinked those bright, luminous eyes at me before nodding again. Well, that answered that question. Conspiracy theory time.

“Okay. Try not to scare them when they come up here. Do you want to press assault charges?”

He growled. I took that as a yes.

Patting him lightly on his good shoulder, I levered back up to my feet and started making some coffee. Before long, a bevy of uniforms trickled in, all of them watching Chaz nervously. A couple kept their hands on the butts of their guns, but none of them had their weapons out. O’Donnell gestured for them to come away from the kitchen so he could speak to them in quiet, hushed tones. One of them looked mighty pissed. That one kept gesturing angrily in our direction, talking in a harsh whisper. Likely none of them realized Chaz could hear and understand everything they were saying.

I had a few mugs poured before they were finished talking. “Anybody need cream or sugar?”

I fixed the drinks and passed them around to the officers. They quieted once I brought the coffee around, shifting uncomfortably in the living room and looking unsure where to start. On the bright side, Chaz was being good, staying down like a gigantic, sleepy wolf. He didn’t look quite so threatening that way. The occasional flash of his teeth was the only outward sign of his efforts to restrain his temper, ruining the image of a rather large but mostly harmless guard dog. He settled down after I gave him a nudge with my foot on the way to the kitchen.

I picked the bullet up off the counter as I grabbed the last mug, my own, and took a seat on the couch. The officers were huddling on the far side of the room, as far as they could get from Chaz without looking too conspicuous. None of them but O’Donnell were willing to come anywhere near the kitchen.

“I guess you guys must have some questions for me. Before we go into that, can I ask one of my own?”

O’Donnell answered me. “Sure. Shoot.”

I leaned forward and carefully set the bullet down on the coffee table. Right in the middle where nobody could mistake the gleam of silver. “Who told you guys to be prepared to deal with a shifter?”

One of the cops rubbed his chin, looking nervously at Chaz. His badge said D. VEGA–the infamous Sergeant Vega perhaps? Was he the same one mentioned in that newspaper article about Royce saving my butt? I was willing to bet so. He was reluctant, but answered me soon enough.

“An assistant to Mr. Royce called last night and said there was possible lycanthrope involvement in your kidnapping. Since we had that complaint from you about the break-in the night prior, the captain advised us to load up silver shot before coming down here.”

Huh. Royce said jump and the police asked how high. Why would he say Weres were involved in this mess when he knew as well as I did that Max was behind everything? Was he trying to get my boyfriend out of the way because Royce thought I wouldn’t touch him as long as I was committed to somebody else? If that was the case, he needed a serious reality adjustment. There were a heck of a lot more convincing reasons I wasn’t interested in socializing with the vampire. I’d worry about it later.

“Whatever’s going on, it has nothing to do with Weres,” I said, balancing my coffee mug on my knee. “The guy who tried to break in and the one who kidnapped me are vampires. Some yahoo named Max Carlyle is orchestrating the whole thing.”

Chaz gave voice to a thunderous growl that caused everyone in the room, including me, to jump nervously.

I hushed him while Sergeant Vega, carefully ignoring the angry werewolf huffing a few feet away, said, “Ma’am, we’re going to have to take you down to the station for questioning.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me! I just got home, feel like shit, haven’t showered in two days, probably need a doctor, and you want me to come down to the station? My life is stressful enough as it is. You can ask me whatever you need to know right here.”

O’Donnell hid a smile behind his coffee mug. The rest of the cops were rolling their eyes; a couple were smirking. Seems a few of them were glad to see Vega taken down a notch. For his part, the sergeant looked like he’d just bitten into a particularly sour lemon.

“We need to know what happened so we can figure out what to do about it,” Vega said. “If there’s some psychotic vampire out there kidnapping women, we can’t leave him on the streets. We have databases and files, sketch artists who can draw up the perp so we know who to look for. None of that is here.”

“I understand that. Trust me, I agree with you. He’s a monster and needs to be stopped. However, Alec Royce knows way more about him than I do. Hell, I was so out of it after this …” I pointed to the bandages on my neck that everyone had studiously been avoiding mentioning or looking at. Uneasy gazes flickered to the bandages and away again. Wusses. “I doubt I could tell you more than the general part of the state I was in, let alone the name of the town or address. Royce has some history with the guy behind it; he can tell you more about Max than I could. Give me time to rest and think about it, and maybe I’ll remember some details that would be of use to you.”

One of the cops was watching Chaz over his shoulder. “Would he know anything about that leech?”

I followed his gaze, questioningly meeting those gleaming husky eyes. Chaz shook his head slightly, fur ruffling up around his shoulders. He didn’t know anything and wasn’t happy about it.

The cop was surprised Chaz responded to his question. “He understands us?”

“Of course. He’s furry, not stupid.”

“Can he talk?” another cop asked.

“No,” I responded, mildly amused. “Look at his muzzle. He can’t form words with that. Wait ‘til he shifts back, then we can go to the station and answer whatever questions you want.”

Sergeant Vega turned back to me, scowling. “We need you down there to answer questions now, not tomorrow. We can’t put the investigation on hold for this. It’s willful obstruction.”

“Tough shit,” I grumbled, not sympathetic at all. “I told you. We’re not doing this now.”

“Yes, we are.”

Yeah, this was going to take a while.

Chapter 17

Once the cops were gone, I slumped back on the couch, exhausted. Devon was watching Chaz, standing alertly by the door. He didn’t have his hands on his guns like the police had, but he still looked like he was going to draw down if Chaz so much as looked at him funny. He’d convinced the officers standing guard to let him come in after Sergeant Vega took a break from grilling me to make a call from his squad car to his superiors at the station. The sarge wasn’t happy to see the White Hat when he returned, but as Devon kept quiet and didn’t interfere, Vega didn’t make any efforts to kick him out.

I was too tired and too drained to care. I’d lost a good part of the day trying to explain what happened to me in such a way as to not have to go down to the station. In the process of arguing and explaining, I’d convinced one of them to help get the remains of the cuffs off my sore, chafed wrists.

It took a call to Officer Lerian, Sara’s on-again-off-again beau, to get the other cops to back off. I swore up and down that Chaz and I would lie low for the night and come see him tomorrow after work to make our statements. The other officers didn’t like it much, but after a not so subtle reminder that both Chaz and I were considering pressing charges, Sergeant Vega finally agreed. Technically, it wasn’t Officer Lerian’s jurisdiction, but the other officers didn’t seem to mind so much that someone else would be dealing with me and Chaz.

Plus, they had no idea how to transport an injured thirteen-foot-something Were and were not up to answering my questions about what the hell they’d been doing in my apartment. I’d been kidnapped on the street. They had no business hunting around my stuff, particularly since they could’ve gotten the information about my whereabouts and kidnapper from Royce. The officer who interviewed Royce had established the vampire knew something about Max Carlyle. They could’ve lifted prints from my car or gotten physical descriptions from witnesses to the kidnapping on the street. Whatever their reasons for being here, I was willing to bet they were being so accommodating because of the stink I was making over the illegal search and the damage done to my apartment.

As for Chaz’s injuries? We’d talk about that once he was back to his human self, seeing as he couldn’t discuss much of anything as he was now. He’d need to heal a bit more and rest for a while before he’d be in good enough shape to shift back. Sadly, the laws governing Others mandated that any inhuman creatures unable to speak due to their shift, and anyone involved with them, could only file formal complaints when all concerned were in human guise (thus no immediate danger to other parties involved). That meant we weren’t allowed to press charges until Chaz had a chance to talk about what happened and give his side of the story.

Whatever else was going on, I was convinced that the police search of my home was a setup of some kind, designed to either trap or kill Chaz. After all, what reason did the cops have to be here if not for the direction from Royce? Since it was one of Royce’s lieutenants who made the call to the cops, he must be trying to get Chaz out of the way. It made me worry which of my friends Max or Royce might go after next. Why were they trying to get rid of him?

I also had to consider the possibility they were trying to find something of mine. If they were agents of either vampire, they might have been trying in a roundabout way to get their hands on the hunter’s belt. No doubt, the cops would confiscate such a weapon and check if it was related to my kidnapping or something worse. If the belt was taken out of my hands, obviously I couldn’t use it against Royce or protect myself if he decided to take a more forceful approach to turn me.

“It’s going to get dark in a couple hours,” Devon said, interrupting my thoughts. “We should get moving.”

Chaz lifted his head from his paws, tilting his head slightly to one side. I got up with a groan, heading to my computer. “Give me a sec to make a couple calls, then we can leave.” I paused in my tracks, looking down at myself. “Actually, let me make those calls, grab a fast shower, then we can leave.”

He nodded with a wry grin, and I settled into the chair in front of my computer. I booted up and tapped out some passwords. After a quick search, I found Arnold’s e-mail from what felt like a million years ago.

TO: S. Waynest
FROM: ArnieGoblinSlayer20
SUBJECT: V. W. and the belt

Hi Shiarra, hope this makes it past your spam filters. I am e-mailing you from home, I just saw the news. If you haven’t already, pick up the paper or check the local news on the net, you’ll see.

I figure by now you’re probably in a tough spot. I might be able to help.

Start wearing the belt at night, no matter what. Don’t leave home without the necklace or perfume on. You might be in danger during the day too, call my cell as soon as you get this (212-555-9035).