“I was close to reentering devoveo when you saved me from the hands and fangs of my enemies. I had been drained, Jane. Tortured. And you freed me. To save me, my people fed me full, beyond volumes even Naturaleza might drink. They brought me both humans and Mithrans and I drank deeply, nearly draining the cattle, in order to keep me from the brink of true-death. But it was not enough. My body healed, but my mind was . . . fragile. My . . . instability . . . was not an excuse for what I did, as Americans say, but this does offer some explanation.”
My mouth had gone dry during his halting words and I had to fight to breathe slowly, but calm was far from me. I knew Leo could hear my increased heartbeat, and smell the shocked pheromones seeping through my pores, because his pupils dilated. It was a vamp predator reaction.
His control held and he went on. “Perhaps if my heir had not been recently risen from being put to earth. Perhaps if my primo had not been recently risen as Onorio. Perhaps if my Mercy Blade had not been acting upon agendas of his own, and perhaps if the priestess had not kept information from me . . .” He shrugged again, and this one was far less graceful. “Perhaps many things. I was powerful, full of the blood of my people, but I was not in control when I forced you, when I drank from you against your will and attempted to bind you. I was not myself.”
Leo raised his eyes from his hands and sat back, moving slowly, the way one predator moves in the presence of another, to not startle or give cause for attack. “Your eyes glow golden,” he said, his voice like a caress. “There is nothing in the few histories of skinwalkers that speak of such a bright glow. Yellow eyes, yes. But not this glow.”
I struggled with my heart rate, trying to keep it steady as Leo said aloud something that been my secret, mine alone, and then mine and Molly’s, for so very long. But my flesh went hot as I thought about what he might mean by the histories of skinwalkers and I had to wonder what he had discovered. What his priestess might have told him.
Leo went on. “You are different from others of your kind, I think.”
Beast’s hackles rose and I shoved down on her, feeling her slink away, her surprise as intense as my own that Leo would talk to me about all this, about any of this. But like any cat, she was also amused and delighted at the power play and at Leo’s . . . tentativeness, was the only word I could find. She sat in the back of my mind and extruded her claws, pressing them into my mind. It hurt. She intended it to.
When I didn’t respond, Leo lifted the fingers of one hand, as if throwing something to the side. “But that is of no matter. What is imperative is that I make this right. I forced a feeding. I hurt you.”
I nodded, the movements jerky. My hands gripped the upholstered arms of the chair as if to keep me in place. “When I took your blood, against your will, when I attempted to bind you against your will, I broke . . . not law, but . . . custom, perhaps. That which is custom for masters. For the forced taking of your blood, I owe you a boon,” he said, “at the very least. A great boon. You could have half of my kingdom.” He smiled, but I just stared, not acknowledging his use of scripture in the analogy. “Until such a time as you claim it, you own part of me. I am yours to command.”
“Ummm.” Yeah, that’s telling him. But really. What was I supposed to say? And You own part of me? Say what? I said instead, “But you gave blood to help Misha’s daughter Charly stay alive.”
“That was charity for one injured by Naturaleza.”
“Okay. You owe me a big honking boon. Gotcha.”
He didn’t smile. “And”—he took a breath, deeper than the ones that simply allowed him to talk; it was a human breath in its depth—“at some time in the future, when you are able”—he looked back at his hands and said in a perfectly human tone—“I would have your forgiveness.”
If one of my vamp enemies had been in the room, he could have meandered over and drained me dry, before I could react, I was so stunned. “Uhhh.”
“George and my servant whom you call Wrassler have additional information for you regarding the gather. You are dismissed.”
Like usual. But this time I didn’t even care. I stood, walked to the office door, and out into the hallway. Bruiser was waiting for me. Leo’s primo looked me over, lifted a single elegant eyebrow, and closed his mouth on whatever he was going to say. Instead Bruiser said, “You look . . . peaked.”
“Yeah.” I blew out my breath and stuck my hands deep in my pockets, my shoulders up near my ears. “I think that means I look crappy.”
Bruiser smiled, the motion slow as he took me in again, his eyes roaming almost possessively. He gestured along the hallway, indicating it was time for us to move. When we were some ten feet from Leo’s door, he said, “You do not look crappy. You look lovely.”
I shook my head but I couldn’t help the grin his words brought to my lips. I wasn’t a lovely woman by anyone’s estimation. Interesting, maybe. When I was all doodied up maybe a bit better than interesting. But never lovely, which implied more natural grace than I’d ever had and bone structure that was less strong. But I wasn’t good with compliments and so I just shrugged and followed him. Which was easy. Bruiser had, by far, the best butt I’d ever seen on anyone, and it flexed as he walked toward the front of the building.
“The boss said you have info for me?” I asked, changing the subject from me and taking my attention off his backside, to something I could converse about. Like business.
“Yes.” Bruiser’s lips pulled down into a scowl and he turned to me, tilting his head down so our eyes were on a level. “We have a Mithran missing, in a strange manner, and I have a bad feeling she is true-dead.”
“True-dead how? When you behead a vamp you have a lot of proof, most of it bloody and gory and hard to get out in the wash.”
He slanted his eyes at me again, dark humor lurking around his mouth. “Strange. Like something out of TV or film. One of Leo’s newly freed scions disappeared from her sleeping lair overnight. The only thing left was her jewelry, her clothes, and her personal items.”
“No body. No head,” I clarified.
“No. And nothing to wash out.” He smiled.
“She maybe left with someone?”
“No. Her new blood-servants went to bed with her. When the boys woke, all that was left was a pile of dust. Ash and some kind of granules, actually.”
My mouth opened and closed. I had nothing to say to that for way too many steps down the hallways. I figured the term boys meant her young blood-servants. Ewww. I managed “That is weird, even for fangheads. The boys hurt her? Burned her to ash?” Though I had no idea how that might be possible.
“No. Leo sent a master he trusts to drink from them. At dawn, they went to sleep in a pile like a bunch of puppies and when the boys woke, she was gone.”
From a side corridor Wrassler emerged. “You tell her?”
“I did. She seems as bemused as we are.”
Wrassler popped the knuckles of his left hand, and then the right, and what would have been snaps in an ordinary-sized human were more like thunks from his meaty hands. “I’ve been handling it.” He looked at Bruiser and something passed between them that I couldn’t decipher in the heartbeat of time it lasted. “I got a minor promotion to security chief.”
I thought about that for a moment. The primo was security chief as part of his duties as primo, but he seemed almost indifferent at the change in the status quo. I wondered if the change was due to Bruiser’s own change in status to Onorio and if he’d share later, or if I’d never be told what was up. Never was more likely. Even if Bruiser was some kinda superblood-servant, that didn’t mean he would be free from loyalty to Leo. I did wonder if Superblood-Servant warranted his own comic book and I had to smother a laugh at the thought of him in a black bodysuit and bat wings. “Huh,” I said, fighting the laughter. That’s me. So good at soliloquies.