I felt the padded mat beneath my feet as I walked toward Leo. I matched my body to the beat, measured by the percussionist, famously shaking a plastic bottle partially filled with rocks. The music and the lyrics were primal and intense. And Leo watched me, standing with his shoulders rolled forward, his hands open and empty. Blood dried across his skin. Bruiser’s blood. Dangerous, this being. Deadly.
Yet as Leo took a breath, the movement of his ribs looked oddly angelic—fallen angel–style. His hair was loose, curling around his face like strands of black silk. His sclera was white, centered with human-black but wide, dilated pupils. But he didn’t exhale.
There would be no tells with this one. No hitches of breath for a being who didn’t need to breathe. No change in tension for a being who didn’t depend on a heartbeat to move.
From deep, deep inside, Beast padded. Settling into my blood and flesh and bones. And I realized that she was tugging with the silver leash that tied her to Leo. I felt him shift his weight, only a hair, onto his back foot. Beast was sharing her binding with me.
Letting me use it.
And Leo watched me move in sync with the slightly offbeat blues guitar. Again, I started laughing, a purr of delight. Bonamassa was singing the line “lifting me up.” My hips moved in a little figure eight. Enticing.
Leo struck, kicking vamp-fast.
But I wasn’t there anymore. I was three feet to the side. And Leo had a claw mark on his chest, centered over the spiderweb of scars. Bright blood welled to the surface, long, thin, deep gores. Beast claw streaks. I clenched my fist and felt her claws press into my palms.
Crap. My hands had shifted.
“First blood,” Leo said, “to my Enforcer.”
I raised my left and made a tiny come hither gesture as Joe sang the words “tearing me down.” I didn’t look at my hand, but I saw the golden pelt that covered my arms halfway to my elbow, and the human-shaped hands with bigger knuckles, longer fingers, and the extruded Beast claws.
My toes spread and gripped the padded mat, better footing than a human foot. But I didn’t look down. I took a short step to the right and flitted my fingers again. This time it was a come-and-get-it gesture. And I grinned, showing my blunt human teeth.
Leo took a breath. Time slowed, viscous as Bruiser’s drying blood. The silver chain deep inside quivered in warning. Leo’s muscles rippled, his fists striking, feet shoving, body twisting, torquing power into the move.
I didn’t block. I shifted back a step, his fists passing so close I felt the air cut my skin at the jaw and brush across my chest. The music ground deep, the offbeat percussion giving my hips a swivel as I stepped into Leo’s move and let his momentum carry him back across my leg, his balance failing. I caught his arm and rolled him over my thigh, swung him around, back to his feet. I danced to the side, landing strikes as I moved, at kidney, spleen, and circling around to his front, pounded the soft tissue between his ribs, and lower down at the soft spot just slightly above the navel. Kill targets had he been human, and had this duel been with blades. The significance of the placement wasn’t lost on Leo, who grunted with surprise, and what might have been delight.
Instead of dying, Leo laughed and his eyes bled scarlet. But his fangs stayed up, locked away. Vamps can’t laugh and vamp out at the same time. It wasn’t possible. But Leo . . . was doing it.
We danced around each other, feet out of sync with the music, but somehow in sync with each other, as I led him by the silver chain of the binding. “Come on, Leo,” I murmured. “Dance with me.”
“Dance of blood and death,” he murmured back. And he kicked, so fast I didn’t see him move. The blow landed, hard, knocking out my breath. I dropped and rolled and sucked in air that ached. As I was coming up, Leo kicked again. I ducked and bent my body inside the kick, against his thigh, shoulder to his groin. And I hit his knee with a well-placed elbow. It snapped. A crippling strike had he been human. He toppled. Over me. I rolled out, landing two more blows on his torso. Found my feet.
Leo was standing. And he was laughing. “Come, my Enforcer. Is that all le petit chaton avec les griffes has for me today?”
The next few seconds were fastfastfast. Slashing-punching-stabbing moves. Too close to kick, too fast to grapple. My heart beat hard, the air in my lungs like bellows beneath the music. I tasted blood and knew my lips were split. Saw the blood shoot from Leo’s nose to splatter on the wall fifteen feet away, the blood spurting across my pelt as I backhanded him on the backstroke.
I heard a bone in his hand break as he misjudged and caught my shoulder instead of soft tissue. Distantly, I felt the punch that nearly dislocated my jaw and spun me away from him. With one hand, I worked my jaw, spitting the blood to the side. He was a vamp. He watched my blood fly. And I struck. The move was all Beast, torquing and lifting, kicking and hitting. The impacts lifted Leo off his feet. He landed off the mat. Flat. And lay there.
I walked over and looked down at him. Not close enough for him to grab an ankle, but close enough that I could see his purely human eyes and the pain in his face. My breath and the raw voice of Bonamassa were the only sounds in the room. I jutted my chin at his busted nose. “That’s for Bruiser’s beating. The rest of it was for my forced feeding, you bastard. Your apology be damned.”
Overhead, Bonamassa sang, “living in a dust bowl,” and the guitar wailed its plaintive notes. I walked away. A new Bonamassa started to play. It was “One of These Days,” a slower-paced song, but grinding and hot. All I needed was to be wearing a red dress to make it all perfect. I laughed softly, the sound hidden beneath the guitar licks. Over my shoulder I said, “Meet you in your office, Leo. We need to chat.”
CHAPTER 11
Decide. Now.
I walked out the door, into the hallway, Eli on my heels. The door shut behind us as Bonamassa sang the line “I’ll be coming home.” My second stayed silent until we reached the women’s locker room. He pushed open the door and followed me inside. The room was long and narrow, with lockers down both walls and plain wood benches down the middle. Showers and toilets were on the far end. The music played here too, sultry and painful, but soft enough that we could talk. When the door shut I asked, “You think you should be in here?”
“I don’t give a rat’s aaa . . . ear for what the sign on the door says. Sit.” He pointed. I sat. Eli laid out all my weapons on the bench beside me and checked out the room. I checked out my hands and feet. Human again. Mine. Satisfied with our privacy, Eli brought bath cloths and towels from a set of metal shelves in the back, one of which he wet in the sink and wrung out. “We’re alone. Lemme see.”
He pressed gently on my ribs, which hurt, but nothing was broken. He raised my arms, one by one, inspecting shoulders, elbows, wrists, hands. “Face,” he said. I lifted my head. With the damp cloth, he wiped up the worst of the blood and tossed the cloth aside. He pressed a clean, dry one gently against my lips, blotting the blood on the outside and giving the still-flowing blood a place to clot. The pressure increased, and he placed a palm on the back of my head to give my neck a rest. I huffed out a breath and leaned into him, letting him hold my weight.
“Leo can heal this,” he said. “I’ll get him if you want.”
“I’d rather die,” I mumbled against the cloth. Eli chuckled, the sound sympathetic. The blood throbbed in my mouth. I was feeling that same throb of misery work through my whole body as the adrenaline stopped pumping and the fight-or-flight chemicals began to break down, making me nauseated. The door opened. I nearly fell as Eli moved. He was holding a weapon in each hand, both mine, grabbed up from the bench.