Bitten to Death

Chapter Eight

I found Niall back at the site of the Sonrhain, mopping up. Literally.

With Genti and his crew also involved in cleanup, I couldn’t just walk over to where Niall stood in the ring and demand help with the Were. I wandered toward him, noting that the fence had already been rehung and he was transferring blood from the floor to a big blue bucket with the help of a bedraggled long-handled squeegee.

On their side of the room, Koren and Meryl swept up broken glass while Genti and Rastus piled the unmarred dishes into plastic bins. “Came to help out, did you?” Genti asked sharply.

“I kept the bear from taking off your head, didn’t I?” I replied. I turned to Niall. “Sorry to bother you,” I said. “But since Disa and Vayl are tied up with contract talks, they sent a note out that I’m supposed to get you so we can drive to town for champagne to celebrate the new agreement. I’d go alone, but I don’t know the area.”

My only warning that Genti had moved on me was the blur I saw out of the corner of my eye and the breeze that stirred the curls off my shoulders. I whirled, triggering the syringe of holy water.

“Genti Luan, stop!” I yelled. Knowing his name. That’s what saved me. As soon as he heard it he froze, his fangs centimeters from my neck. I’d already plunged the needle into his chest. He looked down. “Holy water,” I told him, my thumb firm on the plunger. I realized I was panting and made myself breathe deeper.

Niall had raised the mop in both hands like a spear. “Enough, Genti,” he said sternly. “We need these people if we are to defeat Samos.”

“Admes might not agree with you.”

“Admes is patrolling, just as the Deyrar ordered him to do. Therefore she is happy with him. But think how she would react if she found you had killed her lead negotiator’s avhar.”

Genti’s puffy lips began to tremble. “Remove the needle,” he snarled.

My thumb hovered. So tempting. I yanked it out. “You’re lucky I love my job. Because that’s all that kept you from floating off into the air ducts just now.” I reseated the syringe and stalked out of the room, assuming Niall would follow. He did.

“I need to talk to you,” I growled, realized how that would sound to Trayton, and cleared my throat. “Uh”—I looked over my shoulder—“I noticed you weren’t really into the Were-fighting while it was going on.”

Niall allowed some distance to grow between us and the dining room before he answered. “I feel the same for my Trust as you do for your job. I imagine we have both done things we prefer not to in order to preserve our place in the order of things.”

A-fricking-men. “You understand our contract?”

“I believe so.”

“Okay, well, under its terms you’re required to help us do everything we can to bring Samos down.”

Niall looked amused, as if I’d begun to tickle him under the chin and talk like a baby. “I would hope so.”

“In a roundabout way, this next favor I’m about to ask of you fits under that provision. Because if you don’t help, your Trust could be in big trouble, which would weaken it to the point where Samos might be able to do you from a distance. And if he doesn’t have to show for a face-to-face, we’re screwed.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

We’d reached the suite by now. I took him inside, sat him on one of the library chairs, and put myself between him and the bedroom doorway. “Vayl and I couldn’t allow the Weres to be killed.”

“Of course not.”

“Excuse me?”

“I was planning to speak to them later tonight.”

“Niall, I know you helped trap them.”

He dropped his head. “When the Deyrar orders . . . you obey. She knew I wished to deny her. But she’d called Admes to stand beside her at the time. Within reach of those razor-sharp—” He looked up, as if realizing he’d almost let a state secret slip. “I promised myself I would find a way to make it right afterward.”

“Well, you waited too long. She sent Rastus to cap them.”

“Cap?” He shook his head. “I don’t—”

“Kill.” You goddamn old fart! “I helped Kozma, the werebear, escape in time. But the wolf was shot.” I grabbed Niall’s hand and pulled him out of the chair. “He says you can help him.”

“He knows me?”

“Your scent anyway. He’s full of silver,” I said as I led Niall toward the bedroom. “Do you know how to extract it?”

“Of course. My power centers around the moon-changers.” As soon as we crossed the threshold to the bedroom he stopped so suddenly he jerked me back into him.

He took maybe three seconds to process the sight of Trayton resting on my brown pima cotton sheets with their gold chalice border. Then he closed the door so hard it actually shook, setting his shoulders against it, as if an army was about to take a battering ram to the other side.

“I thought we were coming in here for a jacket and car keys. So you could take me to where you were hiding him—in the woods perhaps. But he’s here. In. The. Trust. Are you insane?” Niall demanded in a stage whisper.

I started to laugh. And couldn’t stop. It became the most hilarious question anyone had ever asked me. Niall didn’t get it, of course. As I held my aching stomach and tears rolled down my face, he went to Trayton and studied his wound, which I’d bandaged with a handful of Armor All wipes and some electrician’s tape I’d found in the garage. Hey, somebody else could worry about infection. My job was to figure out how to keep the guy from leaving a trail for his would-be killers to follow.

“Trayton’s my—” I stopped. “Just fix him, Niall. Otherwise the contract is void and Vayl and I will get Samos on our own.”

He stared at the armoires, seeing beyond the wood and the walls behind them, struggling with the fears that skittered across his face like the bugs that frequent cesspools and murder scenes.

“All right,” he said finally, his shoulders slumping wearily. “I’ll do what I can.” He bent over the Were, his power rising as he moved. The Vampere called this central ability a cantrantia. And I felt it like a shifting inside my bones. It grew out from him, a primal force that made me check to make sure I had a wall at my back.

I watched him pour that power into Trayton, who jumped as if he’d been shocked. Immediately his wound began to bubble, first red, then silver, as the toxins from the bullet bled out of him. He clutched at the mattress and bit his bottom lip as the pain rocked him.

Shit! I wrapped my hands around my stomach, which didn’t like this show any more than my noodly knees did. How had I allowed this to happen? The last guy who’d tried to lick my hand had ended up dead on the floor of an abandoned warehouse thirty seconds later. Of course, he’d been a psychotic mail bomber who’d worked his way up the federal employee ladder to the secretary of state before we’d finally nailed him. But still.

Niall looked up to find me watching him. “We need something to wipe this off. Tissues. A towel. Quickly,” he urged. “This will burn back into his skin if I don’t remove it at once.”

I dove into the cabinet under the bathroom sink, hiking supplies at Niall like the center for the Cleveland Browns. Finally he said, “That will do.”

“So, you must enjoy a cantrantia that allows you to control Weres, huh?” I said as I came back into the room. “You’ve probably thought about starting your own little slave colony with that kind of power. Or at least a booming betting ring.”

Not fair, snapped Granny May from her bridge table at the front of my brain. For this game she’d partnered with Running Bull against Doctor Who and Darwin. While Darwin nodded in agreement she continued, He’s helping and you pull out the smartass on him?

She doesn’t want to face the truth, replied my Inner Bitch from her favorite bar stool. Every time she gets close to someone, she starts a fight. Then she doesn’t have to.

Can we stop the ego gossip, please? I begged. This is not about me. This is about . . . well, shit, now I’ve forgotten. Let’s hope the vamp remembers.

Niall took his time cleaning Trayton’s wound before he said, “The Weres are not, have never been mine to destroy. Not until . . .”

“Until Disa showed up?”

“Oh, she’s been here since the mid-1800s. But she was just someone to be pitied back then. She kept her ambitions, and her powers, hidden until quite recently. By then it was too late for us to stop her. Though we did try.”

Trayton moaned and Niall put a hand on his forehead. He quieted immediately.

“So why didn’t she just off the Weres when they went wild in the dining room?”

“I suppose she didn’t move against them because you were there,” he said. “You’d already made it clear that Hamon had bound us to lawfulness during the negotiations. And she couldn’t endanger the Trust.”

“Maybe she thought you should be able to control them.”

“I did try. But once the original hold is broken, it’s difficult to weave a new one, especially when the Were is infuriated and hurt. And so we did nothing.” He winced. “Which meant we had to sacrifice one of our own. Disa felt it was worth it. After all, he was one of the Trust’s least important members.” Niall sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

Trying to maintain that loyalty to something bigger. I guess I can see that. But to the point where you’re rationalizing deaths and subverting your cantrantia? I gotta know more about this little woman who always gets her way. “How did Disa become part of the Trust?” I asked.

“You mean you don’t know?”

I shrugged. “Why should I?”

Niall snorted. “Because Vayl is the one who brought her here.”