Nightbred

Chris glanced at her watch. She had left Jamys sleeping in the cabin, and the sun wouldn’t set for another three hours. “So show me this dress.”

In the Petites section the salesgirl went to a rack of holiday dresses and removed a sleek, shimmering black sheath that looked as if someone had slashed it with scissors.

“I know it looks like crap on the hanger,” the salesgirl said quickly, “but it’s totally different on. It was made for someone with your figure.”

Chris looked down at herself. “I have no figure.”

“Yeah, which is why I’m kind of hating your guts right now,” the girl admitted.

Chris chuckled as she took the dress and headed into the dressing room. A few minutes later she came out and went to the nearest full-length mirror, where she saw a gorgeous stranger wrapped in long, slinky ribbons of black.

“Holy cow.” She had no reason to buy something this beautiful and useless, but she wasn’t sure she could make herself take it off again.

The salesgirl appeared behind her holding a pair of matching black platform heels, a tiny beaded black bag, and a headband of black crystals. “Could you? Just so my hatred is completely justified?”

Chris added on the accessories and then gazed along with the salesgirl at the results. “Damn. You have a business card, right?”

“Yeah.” The girl absently dug one out of her pocket and passed it to her as she kept staring. “Damn.”

Chris paid for her purchases and packed the bags into the trunk of the rental before she walked over to a sandwich shop to grab something to eat. She discovered she didn’t have much appetite, but forced down a salad and a tall glass of orange juice anyway.

Her next stop was a drugstore, where she bought a selection of first-aid supplies and took them into the customer restroom. The cut on her thigh had already started scabbing over, and thanks to Jamys probably wouldn’t become infected, but as per her training she cleaned it and applied a new adhesive bandage.

Chris had always imagined taking on the responsibility of providing blood for a Kyn lord would be a little revolting. It wasn’t that she was squeamish; she didn’t mind the sight or smell of blood or the pain of the small wounds required to start the flow.

The thought of being used as someone’s food was what had troubled her; she was a person, not a Happy Meal.

Helping Jamys this morning had dispelled all her worries. When she’d realized how weak he’d been, she hadn’t even hesitated. Watching him drink from the cut she’d made on her thigh had made her feel strangely protective, almost possessive. That had quickly turned into very divergent feelings as soon as his hands grasped her leg.

She should have known. Burke had warned her that sometimes blood wasn’t the only thing Kyn wanted while feeding on a mortal, especially if there was any kind of physical contact. He hadn’t mentioned how badly the tresora would want it, though, and maybe that had been on purpose, to keep her from finding out.

She didn’t regret being intimate with Jamys. How could she? He’d made her light up like Las Vegas, and after that horrible nightmare of being trapped in that tomb, she’d needed it. Her only real regret was that she hadn’t done much for him in return—but secretly she’d loved that, too. How many women could honestly say that they got their guy off with a single touch?

Chris parked outside her final stop, a community blood bank that was one of many owned by the tresoran council. All she had to do was show her jardin identification at the desk and they’d bring her a large cooler stocked with fresh units. Two coolers, if she wanted that much. She had no reason to feel guilty about getting it.

I can’t go on feeding him myself every day, and it’s too dangerous for him to hunt. This is the only alternative.

At the desk inside a smiling young woman greeted her, and then inclined her head in the public shorthand for a bow as soon as Chris placed her ID on the counter. “Will your lord be coming to Miami tonight, Miss Lang?”

“No, this is for a visitor.” She had decided against mentioning Jamys’s name; she had no idea if it might get back to Lucan. “I’ll need a two-week supply of stores. Also, if you have one, a nine and a couple of clips.”

The girl nodded. “Right away.”

As she waited by the counter, she looked over at the people waiting in the lobby. All of them were mortal, and she was pretty sure two of the men in suits were tresori. With their backs to the walls, the pricey but discreet style of their clothes, and the clean-cut hair, they gave off that sort of official vibe. Both seemed to be ignoring her in favor of the magazines they were reading, which seemed a little odd. Tresori always checked out everything around them; their training instilled a kind of professional paranoia that became almost second nature. That was exactly why she’d taken a hard look at the people in the lobby.

One of the men seemed engrossed in the latest issue of People, while the other was thumbing through a copy of Time. The only problem with the second guy was that the mag in his hands was upside-down.

Maybe he’s dyslexic, Chris thought as she wandered down the counter, pretending to check out the literature while getting in better position for a closer look. Out of the corner of her eye she saw both men shift subtly in response. Nope, they are watching me.

One of the men rechecked her position by bending down to untie and retie his shoe. As he did, his jacket sleeve slid back to reveal part of his forearm and half of a black cameo tattoo, the center of which should have contained the profile of the man’s Kyn lord, but was instead covered in scar tissue.

Chris, who had never seen a tresora with partially mutilated ink, had to force herself to read the front of the pamphlet she wasn’t reading.

Tresori assigned to guard the blood bank would have been stationed at the entry points to the building; watchers wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be seen at all. Chris wandered back to check the number of names that hadn’t been crossed off the sign-in sheet, which was seven; she’d counted nine people waiting in the lobby.

More than anything, the man’s scarred tattoo frightened her. She’d never seen anything like it. And why would a tresora hack out of his own flesh the face of his Kyn lord?

Chris waited until she saw the receptionist emerge with the cooler from a back room. Chris vaulted over the counter and ran to the girl, whose eyes went wide.

“Side door?” When the girl gestured, Chris took the cooler and smiled. “Thanks. And the nine?”

“In the cooler.”

She ran for the exit, bolting through it and sprinting for the rental car. She had enough time to get in and drop the cooler on the seat before she saw the two tresori run around from the front of the building. She ducked down and slipped the keys in the ignition as they trotted past her, both looking in every direction before they hurried to a big black cargo van.

As soon as they’d climbed inside the van, Chris started the Lexus, reversed out of her space, and sped out of the lot. They were good, she thought when she saw the van appear in her rearview. She floored the accelerator as she scanned the road ahead for an intersection with some cover, and once she reached one with a green light, she coasted to a stop and turned on her emergency flashers before she reached into the cooler.

Chris left the engine running as she got out of the car, raised the hood, and waited in front of it, watching for the van. It slowed as it approached, and then as she’d hoped, it stopped behind her rental.

She stepped out from behind the hood and threw a unit of blood at the van’s windshield; it burst and covered the glass and part of the hood with blood. With the nine-millimeter she’d taken out of the cooler, she shot out both front tires, and put another three rounds into the van’s engine before she dropped the hood on the rental, climbed in behind the wheel, and sped off.

Where there were tresori, there were bound to be backup tresori, so Chris drove around Miami until she was certain she wasn’t being tailed. Dumb and Dumber didn’t belong to Alenfar or she would have recognized their faces, which meant they’d been brought in from another territory. She could describe them to Jamys and see if they matched anyone who served his father, but most American tresori wouldn’t have fallen for her stalled-car routine. She’d bet money they were European—maybe a couple of trackers working for the council or even Tremayne.

But why follow me? In the grand scheme of things, Chris knew she was less than nobody.

The sun was setting by the time she returned to Biscayne Bay, and once she parked the rental, she walked down the dock to the boat. None of the fisherman she passed seemed out of place, and none of her internal alarms were going off, but once she and Jamys saw Gifford tonight, it would probably be safer to move the boat to a different spot.

She could hear the shower running belowdecks as soon as she climbed on board, and smiled a little as she brought the cooler down and left it on the table. She had to make another trip to the car to get the rest of her shopping bags, but by the time she returned, Jamys was waiting on deck for her.

“Christian.” He took her bags and set them aside before he lifted her from the dock to the boat. “What is all this?”

“Clothes, shoes, girl stuff, that kind of thing.” She hugged him, drawing back only when he didn’t return the embrace. “You found my note, right?”

“Yes.” He took her right hand and brought it up to his face, but he didn’t kiss it. “You smell of blood and gunpowder.”

“I had to shoot a van. I picked up some stores for you, did you see the cooler?” She carried the bags below, where she began to put everything away. “I bought the most amazing dress. You have to take me somewhere nice someday so I can wear it and make all the other women hate me.”

He was staring at her. “You shot a van?”

“Yeah, after I threw blood at it.” She checked her watch. “We should leave soon; Gifford’s lecture starts in an hour.” She held up a jumper to her front. “Does this make me look scholarly, geeky, or just sad?”

He took the jumper from her and tossed it onto the bunk. “Tell me about this van.” ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">