The Darkest Kiss (31 page)

She snarled again and lashed out with her claws, scraping down my leg and deep into flesh. Pain flared, thick and hot, but I ignored it, spinning again and smashing another blow into her mouth, this time dislodging teeth.

She screamed in fury and launched at me. I had no time to run and met her leap head-on, grabbing her throat with one hand and clawing at her eyes with the other. The breath whooshed from my lungs, leaving me gasping as the bakeneko’s back legs clawed at my flesh and her fetid breath washed across my face.

We rolled across the cold concrete, my grunts mingling with her snarls as we punched and clawed at each other. My thumb found her eye socket and I dug deep, desperately trying to blind her. She screamed, the sound deafening, and shook her head from side to side, desperately trying to dislodge my grip. I dug deeper and deeper, until fluid gushed over my thumb and I hit bone. With a quick sideways flick, I tore the eyeball from the socket.

She roared and suddenly her broken teeth were in my flesh, gnawing at my arm. Sweat rolled down my face and white-hot pokers of pain began burning up my arm and into my brain. I drew my legs up, desperately trying to get my feet under her belly before she bit down into bone.

She ripped her head sideways, out of my grip, taking a chunk of flesh with her. A scream burned up my throat, but with it came anger and a desperate strength. My feet found purchase underneath her and I heaved with everything I had, sending her flying up and over my head.

I scrambled to my feet once again and backed away, blood dripping from my fingertips and splashing across the concrete.

The bakeneko hit the far wall and righted herself, her weight on three legs and the right side of her face bloodied and battered. There were strips of flesh—my flesh—hanging from her mouth, and her tongue came out, gathering them inward, before she swallowed.

A bizarre sort of smile stretched her broken features, then her form was shifting once again. Only this time she didn’t become a blonde.

This time, she became me.

And she was perfect.

Perfect.

Aside from the fact that she had a broken arm rather than shredded legs and a chunk out of her arm, I might have been staring at a perfectly clothed reflection. Obviously, whatever magic allowed her to change could hide bloodied clothes or a gouged eye, but it couldn’t heal a broken limb. It was nice to know that some shifting magic remained constant across species.

“I will walk out of here, guardian. I will walk away with no one being the wiser.”

I flexed bloodied fingers and shifted my feet. “Like hell you will.”

And with that, I leapt at her. If she remained in human form, I had a chance. But it wasn’t my only chance.

Iktar and Kade
had
to be close.

She sidestepped fast, but her speed seemed to be restricted by either her human shape or her wounds, and I hit her hard, my boot sinking deep into her side and sending her flying.

I swung round. The bakeneko had regained her balance, but rather than attack, she ran backward. I ran after her, wondering why the fuck she was suddenly retreating when the bitch was so confident of a win.

A second later, I had my answer.

The door behind her was torn off its hinges and two figures appeared, one little more than a shadow and the other blood covered and battered.

“Shoot her!” the bakeneko screamed, her voice my voice. “Blow her fucking brains out!”

Neither man hesitated.

They both raised their guns and fired.

Chapter 13

O
nly they didn’t fire at me.

They fired at the creature wearing my face.

One bright laser beam sliced through her legs, the other through her neck. There was a brief moment when shock registered, then her head parted company from her body and all three bits plopped to the floor.

I stared at her for a moment, unable to believe it was over so suddenly, then wiped a trembling hand across my face and met Kade’s gaze as he limped toward me. “How did you know?”

He gave me a smile that was all aching weariness. “She’s not missing her left little pinky. You are.”

“Then you’re both more observant than me, thank God.” I hadn’t even fucking noticed.

He wrapped a bloody arm around me and dragged me into a hug that was so damn fierce and comforting I felt like crying.

“You’re a mess,” he said, after a while.

“Now there’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black.”

“You both should go to the hospital,” Iktar commented.

I looked around Kade’s arm and saw him lightly toeing the bakeneko’s body. As he did, smoke began to rise, twisting and curling skyward. It swirled around its human remains, finding shape and solidarity. Briefly gaining the form of a cat.

She turned, and her ghostly gaze met mine. She didn’t say anything, simply bowed, then her form broke apart and began drifting skyward before disappearing completely.

“She’s gone,” I said, and wondered what sort of afterlife things like her went to.

Iktar glanced at me, his body fading into the shadows and featureless face unreadable. “It is always best to be sure.”

And with that, he aimed the laser at her heart and shot the hell out of it. Spirit lizards believed that the soul resided in the heart, and that by destroying the heart you destroyed the soul, preventing it from moving on. In this case, he was too late, but I doubted it would have made a difference anyway. Souls seemed to rise from the whole, not just from the heart.

“He’s right,” Kade commented. “We should take ourselves to hospital and get checked out.”

“
You
can take yourself there. I’m going home to shower and eat.” Although I’d have to shift shape and stop the bleeding first. Not to mention help start healing the missing chunk out of my arm.

But after all that, I
would
head to the hospital—to hold my brother’s hand and wait for news on Liander.

“You
are
bleeding rather heavily, you know. I mean, I’m loving the hug, but between the two of us we’re creating quite a puddle.”

I laughed and stepped back. He was right—there was quite a bit of blood at our feet.

“Then get ye to the hospital. Sable will kick your butt if you haven’t got the strength to pamper her the way she deserves to be pampered.”

“Too damn right.” He touched my torn cheek lightly. “Do you want a lift?”

I shook my head. “I’ll take Iktar’s car. He can grab a lift back with the cleanup team.”

“The cleanup team do not like me,” Iktar commented.

I grinned. “Well, you will show off your party trick at inappropriate moments.”

And having seen that trick myself, I could totally understand their aversion. I mean, a penis he could retract into his body was bad enough, but being able to produce barbs along it as well was just…gross.

“Hey, they asked,” he said. “Not my fault.”

I smiled and shook my head. Iktar didn’t sound too depressed about not being liked, and I had to wonder if he’d done it deliberately. Our spirit lizard got a kick out of not only shocking people but alienating them. Their culture had this weird belief that the fewer friends you had, the more powerful you were. Of course, they also believed family was all that mattered, and that I could
totally
understand.

Kade leaned forward and kissed my uncut cheek. “Today was fun.”

“You have a very odd definition of fun,” I said, voice dry. “And kissing is against the rules.”

“Like you care about the rules.” He gave me a salute good-bye, then spun on his heel and walked out.

I walked over to Iktar and held out my hand. “Keys?”

“In the car.”

“Thanks.”

He nodded, then his all-blue gaze met mine. “This job will kill us all, won’t it?”

I hesitated, then nodded. “Probably. None of us is immortal, Iktar.”

His gaze went back to the bakeneko’s body, then he nodded slowly. “I guess it’s as good a way of going as any.”

“Oh, I think getting old and slipping away peacefully surrounded by friends and loved ones would be a hell of a lot better than this.”

His gaze came back to mine. “But you and I are not destined for that, are we?”

“Probably not.” I squeezed his shoulder lightly, his flesh cold and clammy under my fingertips, then walked away. I didn’t want to think about a future I might not have. I just wanted to get to the hospital and make sure my present was alive and well.

L
iander’s surgeon walked in an hour after I arrived back at the hospital.

Yann and Raina stood up immediately, but Rhoan didn’t move, his expression carefully neutral but the tension in his body suddenly sharpening.

“How did the operation go?” Raina asked, her normally warm tones thin and high. Shaky.

The gray-haired surgeon gave her one of those smiles doctors all over the world seemed to use. The one that said everything was fine, even if things were going to hell and back.

“We repaired the bowel and the small intestine damage, but we can’t one hundred percent guarantee we’ve gotten all the fecal matter out of his abdominal cavity, so we’ll have to keep an eye out for infection. For that reason, we’ve confined him with light silver to stop him from shifting.”

“But silver will kill him—”

“And by shifting, he could accelerate the infection as much as the healing, and that could be dangerous. We need to give it a day or so to be sure.” The doctor gave her his best professional smile. “We don’t use enough silver to kill, just restrain. It’ll burn, but he’ll heal from that and be fine.”

“Oh, thank God,” Raina said, raising one hand to her chest.

The surgeon hesitated, then said, “He did lose a lot of blood, and we’ll have to keep him in the hospital for a little longer than we normally would for a wolf, just because the risk of infection
is
a lot higher, but I think he’s going to be fine.”

“That’s excellent news, Doc,” Yann said gruffly.

The surgeon smiled. “I wish all my patients were as tough as this young man. I don’t like losing patients.”

Which in itself said just how close Liander had been to death.

“Can we go see him, Doctor?” Raina asked.

The surgeon hesitated again. “Only two of you. And only quickly.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

He nodded and spun on his heel. “This way.”

Raina squeezed her husband’s hand, then followed the surgeon. Yann didn’t move. “Rhoan?” he said, voice sharp.

Rhoan looked up quickly. “Yes, sir?”

“You’d better get in there, boy, while the surgeon is feeling kindly.”

Hope flitted briefly across Rhoan’s tired features. “But he’s your son—”

“And he’s your soul mate. And I know he’d probably be more comforted by your presence than mine. Go, son. Go see him.”

“Thank you,” Rhoan said, and scrambled after Raina. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and walked down the hall with her.

I smiled at Yann. “Thank you.”

Yann waved the comment away. “Your brother is probably the only reason Liander held on. That was a bad wound, lass.”

“I know.”

His gaze briefly slipped to the raw wounds still visible on my arm and my face. “I guess you do.”

He sat back down. I leaned against Quinn’s shoulder and finally allowed myself to relax.

Liander was going to be okay, and so was my brother.

Maybe fate wasn’t such a bitch, after all.

A
day later, the doctors confirmed Liander was out of the woods. They’d moved him out of intensive into a general ward, but they still had him restrained. Apparently, they wanted to give it one more day before they allowed him to shift and accelerate the healing.

But at least with him now in a general ward, Rhoan could finally sit by his side and hold his hand. That was what he’d been doing for the last twenty-four hours, and Jack appeared to understand. He hadn’t hassled Rhoan once about getting back to work.

Maybe it was just
my
love life he couldn’t show any sympathy for.

I handed Rhoan a coffee and a burger, then sat down beside him. For the first time in days, he actually looked relaxed. I took a sip of the bittersweet liquid, tried to pretend it was hazelnut
and
nice, then said, “So what are the plans, then?”

He unwrapped the burger and took a bite, then washed it down with the muck they had the cheek to call coffee. “Once he’s cleared to leave, I plan to take him home and look after him.”

“His home, or our home?”

He met my gaze and gave me a tired half-smile. “Our home. It’s what he wants.”

My heart did a happy little dance for Liander, but part of me couldn’t believe Rhoan really meant it—that he wouldn’t change his mind sometime down the track, and break his lover’s heart all over again. “What about what
you
want?”

He took another bite of the burger, then shrugged lightly. “You were right before.”

I raised my eyebrows. “This is a first. Not me being right, because I usually am, but you actually admitting it.”

He snorted softly. “Enjoy it while you can, because it won’t happen again.”

“Oh, I’m sure it will. Me being right, that is.”

He grinned and leaned sideways, hitting me lightly with his shoulder. Coffee slopped over the edges of my cup, splattering my jeans. “Hey, careful. It may not be good coffee, but it
is
coffee, so let’s not waste it.”

He shook his head and finished the burger. After tossing the wrapper in the trash, he said, “I was always so scared about making a commitment and then dying, leaving Liander to cope alone. I never really thought about the opposite happening.”

“We all have to die sometime, Rhoan.” But may it be many, many years away, and not on the job, as Iktar had stated.

“Hell, yeah, but you and I, we have a higher rate of succeeding than most others.”

“You know, that’s a really depressing line of thought when I’m sitting in a hospital filled with sick people and ghosts.” I took a sip of coffee, then added, “So because you’ve suddenly realized that Liander is as vulnerable to death as you and me, you’re letting him live with us?”

“And I’m going to share more of myself with him. I’m going to try and give him what he wants, up to a point, because he deserves better of life and better from me.”

I smiled. “Well, that’s true.”

He snorted softly. “You are such a bitch, sister.”

“Had a great teacher, brother.”

He shook his head. “I won’t do the ceremony. I can’t. I just
can’t
. Not with what we do, not with what we face. But I can give him everything else he wants.”

Not doing the ceremony wouldn’t save Liander from hurt or pain or worse if Rhoan died. Not if what Ben said was true. But I wasn’t about to give my brother another reason to push Liander away. Not when he was finally getting everything he wanted.

“He’s never wanted the ceremony, Rhoan. All he’s ever wanted is you.”

“And that’s the whole problem, sis. I love what I do. I love the adrenaline rush of it.” He hesitated, then added softly, “I’m addicted to it. I
need
it. I can’t completely give it up, not even for Liander.”

And he wasn’t talking about the killing. He was talking about the sex.

“I never knew.”

His gaze met mine. “Liander does. I told him a while ago, when he basically told me to give up other men or he’d walk away.”

“So that’s why you’ve been behaving yourself.”

“Everywhere except work. He understood, Riley. He really did.”

“He’s an amazing man.”

“And as I’ve said all along, I don’t want to lose him.” His gaze went to his lover. “And especially not like this. If one of us has to die, then let it be me.”

“Let it be no one in this little family unit,” I said softly. “I think we’ve coped with enough shit in our lives already.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” He looked at me for a moment, then touched a hand lightly to my still-scarred arm. “The hole is gradually healing.”

“Yeah, thankfully.” Though it
was
taking its time, it would heal and probably without much of a scar. I was going to end up with one on my face, though, at the point where one of the bakeneko’s claws had dug the deepest. But at least it wasn’t in the middle of my face nor was it that big. I could live with it.