The Face of Scandal (26 page)

She hit the play button.

On a windy ledge in the Santa Monica Mountains, Malcolm sauntered cockily into frame. Like Hazel six years earlier, he didn’t yet know that the whole world was watching.

Also available from Totally Bound Publishing:

Wild After Dark: Beyond the Poison Chalice

Helena Maeve

Excerpt

Chapter One

Along the river, the fires had finally burned down to timid, smoky wisps rising little by little into the night sky. If I strained my eyes, I could pick out the bodies arranged like soldiers at the foot of the arch. Only char and silver buckles remained. I’d been thorough this time. No runaways to call for reinforcements, no lapses of judgment to come back and bite me in the ass. Mercy was costly.

As I smoothed a pleat in my camel-hair coat, my fingers caught on a rough, murky patch. I wrinkled my nose. Blood washed out, but still. I stood violently, my boots pelting the concrete a hundred feet below with a rain of loose pebbles. It served me right for wearing my favorite coat on the job.

I made a mental note to keep an eye for some of that witch-hazel soap at the market come Sunday night. Maybe washing powder, assuming I found any. I kicked up from the ledge, landing in a barrel roll from which I rose smoothly, if a little dusty.

The Mom and Pop stores had gone bust decades ago, yet still I picked my way over their rooftops like a ghost. A whole five hundred people slept below, some underground, most not. I kept the streets clear, didn’t make a fuss when my fee was late, and we all went on pretending the quarter was naturally more peaceful than all surrounding boroughs—all except the south side.

Most of us tried not to dwell on what went on in the south side if we could help it.

I crept down at the end of the block, grabbing hold of a gutter to slow my descent before I hit the ground. My landing was smooth and silent, like a gust of wind rippling across the concrete. I blew a strand of blonde hair out of my eyes as I stalked across the potholed tarmac.

A faint breeze was blowing in from the north, ferrying in the blessed chill of winter. I was looking forward to the long-delayed snows. Humans generally lost their appetite for conquest in glacial weather. Long nights kept them cloistered in well-defended strongholds, provisions aplenty to shield them from itinerants of my kind. Bad weather heralded peace, for the most part.

My smile soured at the notion. I had no grounds to complain, but we should have found better ways to grow our numbers by now.

The next fork in the road presented a range of options. A left would take me to the roadhouse by the Mississippi and open the door to Antwan’s bottomless supply of moonshine. I’d curl up in the back of the bar and let him tell me about his day until the first blades of sunshine crept through the window. Or I could take a right and make for the nearest manhole. A splash of pink-and-green graffiti on the grille of an ancient bakery invited me to renounce the Devil, which was no choice at all, seeing as I was purportedly cut from the same cloth.

The humans I’d recently dispatched certainly believed so. They hurled slurs like silver bullets, all equally ineffective.

I slowed my steps. Echoes drifted from across the street, bearing the feeble sounds of a struggle.
None of my business.
The last time I’d interrupted what I assumed was a werewolf getting a little handsy with a new pack initiate, I’d nearly lost a limb.

I made to continue my journey to Antwan’s, already fantasizing about the sharp burn of homemade liquor as it slid down my throat.

A growl cleaved the silence of the night. I stopped in my tracks.

Once, I would’ve had to watch out for cars zooming along the streets like motorized arrowheads, red-eyed humans clutching their steering wheels and seeing nothing. No more. I’d cleared the streets of troublemakers a long time ago. Antwan’s people should’ve known better.

I tracked the racket into the shadows. My eyes adjusted quickly, but still I registered the scene in a series of flashes, like snapshots from a movie.

Two bloodsuckers ganging up on a lone wolf.
Click
. Blood smeared on his collar and staining the front of his checkered shirt.
Click.
The fetid scent of human fear wafting in the air like a white flag.
Click.
The human himself, backed into a corner, his blown-open eyes darting nervously in the low light.

Here was trouble.

I greeted the scent of an impending brawl with a scrape of my boot against the pavement. Four pairs of eyes zeroed on me with a mixture of disbelief and hostility.

No one is ever pleased to see me, why is that?
It was almost enough to hurt my feelings.

“Well, this is awkward,” I drawled. “I thought we agreed all territorial squabbles go through me.”

I recognized the vampires. One of them overnighted two dead-ends away from my place. His appetite for skinny white wolves had thrust him onto my radar before, yet his name escaped me.

“Claudia,” snarled his companion, a redhead with Pippi Longstocking tresses. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“You don’t say… Should I wait until Antwan stakes you both before I take an interest?”

I wasn’t in the mood to put up with property disputes and the alpha of the local pack was gallingly intransigent when it came to blood debts. For the most part, we saw eye-to-eye. My schedule was nailed to every door—Wednesdays were tribunal days at his bar. Every other day of the week, residents of the quarter were kindly requested to keep their fangs, claws and tomahawks sheathed, and leave me to my job.

“Oh, come on,” the redhead sneered. “Phil and I can take him.”

“Yeah, it’s not fucking fair to jump in at the eleventh hour and claim the prize!”

I swept a glance over the foursome. “Prize?”

Phil grinned at me, eyes glazed with bloodlust. “Can’t you smell him?” He jerked his blond head toward the human.

I scented the air. At first the refuse from a nearby dumpster made it difficult to detect anything more than rotten meat and raw sewage. Then I inhaled a perfume at once sweet and dark, like sandalwood and mint—like spring mornings back when I could still enjoy them topside.

It was intoxicating.

“What
is
that?”

“I know, right?” Phil fitfully raked a hand through corn-silk hair. He was all but bounding with excitement. “I found him, so I get dibs.”

The werewolf had planted himself between the wide-eyed human and us. He growled when Phil swayed forward. “One more step and I’ll rip your fucking throat out.”

Shadow gave way to a hirsute visage and glowing red eyes. I had no doubt there was sincerity behind the threat, but the wolf was outnumbered. The odds were not in his favor no matter how good a fighter he was.

“Idiot,” Phil’s ginger-haired companion scoffed. “Don’t you know who this is?” It took me a moment to notice that she was pointing at me
.

Phil picked up the jeer. “Yeah, doesn’t the name Salizar mean anything to you?”

“Salizar is a man,” the wolf rumbled, his voice deep and husky, like he’d been doing a lot of shouting lately.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Phil followed the snarl with a spirited handclap. “Even better! Antwan won’t be on my case when you
die
.”

I felt the air stir around him a fraction of a second before he leaped. The wolf dug his heels into the asphalt, bracing for a blow that never came.

Phil crashed into the brick wall like a sack of potatoes, shaking a few slabs loose as he hit the ground. He hadn’t noticed me snatch a hand around his nape and hurl him aside until he was airborne. He looked confused when he landed. His little friend snarled at me, baring fangs.

“If you know what’s good for you,” I breathed, “you’ll take Phil and get lost.” I seldom bothered with warnings.

My young adversary didn’t seem to appreciate the courtesy. She came at me as if in slow motion. I had plenty of time to duck and clobber her over the head with an elbow. Tendrils of pain snaked up my arm to kindle in my skull even as I heard hers creak.

Ginger Braids skidded on the jagged blacktop as she touched down, scraped palms leaving crimson smears in their wake.

“Maybe I wasn’t clear the first time.” I didn’t bother raising my voice. Cracking my knuckles against my jaw was sufficient. “Get lost.
Now
.”

Phil bolted first, patent leather shoes eating up the concrete. Ginger shrieked after him and slammed her fist into the pavement. She picked herself up comparatively slowly, one of her pigtails drooping over one ear. She was halfway out of the alleyway when she turned and hissed at me like a snake.

I committed her face to memory.

“Thanks,” a voice whispered haltingly behind me.

I swiveled around. The human’s heartbeat might as well have been a marching band. It thudded like a summons. I took a step closer, hooked by his scent, and got my first good look at the so-called prize.

He was taller than I’d first assumed. Taller than me, no doubt. A mop of black, shaggy hair hung in his eyes. He had a good face, the kind you’d imagine at home on a Roman coin. I pegged him at thirty-something. Maybe less. Guessing ages was becoming harder and harder the older I got.

The werewolf sidestepped to block my view, squaring his shoulders as though he expected me to shove past. “I had it under control.”

“Is that why I can scent fresh blood?”

“No. That’s because you’re a leech.”

Oh, great. A purist.
I rolled my eyes. “Dial down the cheek. Your friend’s got the right idea. A little gratitude can work miracles.”

Red Eyes wasn’t convinced. “All the miracle I need is for you to get the hell away from us.”

“So eager to run into Phil’s buddies, are you?”

“Aren’t
you
one of his buddies?”

I mulled that over for the space of a syncopated, human heartbeat. “More like acquaintances. I keep him honest, he keeps me in business… Most of the time he plays by my rules—that is, when he’s not tempted off the straight and narrow.” I squinted at the werewolf. He looked familiar. “A better question is what do you think you’re doing bringing a human onto
my
turf?”

“He didn’t bring me,” the human retorted. I had to hand it to him. He had guts to address me directly. “Lucan, it’s okay…”

“No, it’s not. Stay back.”

“I’ve heard of Salizar,” Lucan’s human pal insisted. “He—sorry,
she
’s supposed to police the quarter.” His striking blue eyes were like a pair of searchlights, tracking me.

I nodded. I was the law, the executioner—hell, I was the nanny no one liked. My sobriquet commanded as much dread as it did bawdy jokes.

“She’s a vampire,” Lucan shot back, though he relaxed his stance.

Weird
. I filed away the observation for later study. I was missing something. The lingering miasma of sandalwood wasn’t helping me think any clearer. “Who’re you?” I wound up asking, glancing from human to werewolf and back again.

A beat passed. The wolf shifted before my eyes, his whiskers receding, claws and fangs retracting like switchblades. Lucan’s human face was all striking almond brown eyes and a mouth like an ellipse. He towered over me. Most men did, so that wasn’t anything to write home about, but I could’ve filled pages on the topic of his broad shoulders. Even human, homeboy was bursting out of his shirt with biceps like that.

I would’ve happily overlooked the bloodstains to focus on that all-important detail, were I not distracted by a sudden flash of recognition.

“
Adam
?”

“Renée.” His retort was deadpan enough to confirm what I’d been dreading. He remembered me.
Shit
.

“I thought her name was Claudia,” his friend murmured under his breath.

I winced. “It is. Renée was—is—an alias I used a few years ago.”
When I was still trawling through the badlands, picking up strays…like your buddy right here.
Not one of my happier episodes, though as I recalled, the sex had been pretty amazing. “I liked you better as Adam,” I told Lucan, nudging him aside with a finger against his chest. “And you are?”

Lucan’s human pal sucked in a breath as the distance between us narrowed to inches. He’d either encountered my kind before or his self-preservation instinct was alive and well, kicking in at long last. To his credit, he didn’t quail under my scrutiny despite an audible gulp that made me smile when I heard it.

“Silver,” he breathed. “My name is Silver.”

“Very emo.”

“I didn’t pick it.” Silver flexed his hands. “I’m sorry, by the way.”

“Phil knows I don’t tolerate that kind of behavior.”

“No, I meant…” He flicked a glance to Lucan, then back to me. “I must smell weird to you.”

“Understatement of the fucking century,” Lucan grunted.