Хлоя Нейл - Twice Bitten

“It’s not me he wanted to see,” he said, dimples at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll have Mr. Brown here circle the block a couple of times and give you two a minute, then join you when I’m done.” He held up the phone in explanation. “I need to finish this.”

“Your pitch,” I said, then maneuvered out the door.

“Hey, Kitten,” he said before I closed the door behind me.

I glanced back.

“Have fun in there.”

The window lifted again and the limousine pulled back onto the street, then took the first right around the block. I walked toward the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE PACK OF LIES I gave the room a three hundred sixty-degree perusal. The bar was empty of patrons, and Berna was nowhere in sight. But people or not, the air was thick with magic. It also smelled of fresh blood and bruises, my palate tingling at the possibility of an early lunch. But this wasn’t blood to be sipped; it was blood already spilled.

Hank Williams crooned softly through the jukebox, warbling out a haunting song about whip-poor-wills and loneliness. The jukebox suddenly hiccuped, and the song skipped, stopped, then picked up again.

I walked to the bar, where the scent of blood was stronger, and gingerly touched my fingertips to a spot on the wood. I pulled back fingers, wet with blood.

“Oh, this is not good,” I murmured, wiping my hands on my pants and scanning the room for signs of the struggle that put it there.

A low moan suddenly echoed from the back room. It was a sound of pain, maybe with some despair thrown in. The hair on my neck stood on end.

Blood on the bar and moaning in the back room—something was very, very wrong. I glanced back at the door, wishing I’d asked Adam to stay and escort me back into the bar.

What the hell had happened while he’d been on the way to pick me up?

And so much for Gabriel’s theory that ConPack put an end to shifter drama.

I let out a curse and thought about my options. Option one: I could wait for Adam to return, but that left me in the bar, with God only knew what on the other side of the door.

Option two: I could make a move of my own. That, of course, risked injury and Ethan’s wrath, but someone was injured in there. I couldn’t very well just stand by and wait for them to die.

I lifted the hem of my pants, pulled the dagger from my boot, and adjusted it in my palm until the grip was perfect. I stood beside the bar for a few more seconds until I’d gathered up the courage to take a step. When I was ready, I blew out a breath and crept, weapon in hand, toward the door. When I reached the red leather, I put my hand on the door and pushed.

The room was black, light spilling around me as I stood in the doorway, one hand still on the leather. The smell of blood was strongest in here, along with something else . . . a tingle of emotion, of fear. Pack magic.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, a shape emerged—a man on the floor, propped against the wall, face bloodied and bruised, one knee up, the other leg extended. His T-shirt was torn, his jeans shredded at the knees.

Even though the tingle had felt familiar, it took my brain a moment to realize what I was seeing.

Whom I was seeing.

It was Nick.

“Oh, my God.” I ran to him, ignoring the pain as my knees hit the tile floor. I dropped the dagger and began scoping out cuts and bruises. “Are you okay?”

He groaned in response.

“What happened to you?” I asked. And, more important, how? Nick was a shifter. He may not have been an Apex, but I’d felt the wake of his magic, knew he had power of his own. Who had the power to hurt Nick?

“Gabriel,” Nick muttered, then coughed hoarsely. “It was Gabriel.”

I blinked back confusion. “Gabriel?”

“He thinks I—,” Nick began, but before he could finish, my dagger skittered to the other end of the room. Shocked, I froze, one hand at Nick’s temple, my heart suddenly pounding in my chest, as I watched it spin in the far corner.

“Too late,” Nick muttered.

Swallowing down a thick rise of fear, I glanced beside me at the booted foot that had kicked my dagger into the corner, and the shape-shifter it belonged to.

Golden eyes glowed.

Gabriel.

My heart began to thud. Improved sparring skills or not, I felt as puny and weak as ever, huddled on the ground before a man who was piqued enough to make the air prickly with his magic.

“It was me,” he confirmed.

He’d done this? To Nick? One of his own Pack members? I tried to play catch-up but couldn’t make sense of it. What could Nick have done that would prompt Gabriel to this kind of violence?

Without words, Gabriel walked to the door and flipped on the overhead fixture with a loud click, flooding the room with light. I blinked back white spots, then stood up and looked him over. His knuckles were raw, and a bruise bloomed over his right cheekbone. Nick had gotten in a hit, then, but had ultimately been bested by the alpha in the room.

And here I was in a room with him, my colleagues miles away, my dagger on the other side of the room. It was time to use the only weapon I had left—a good, old-fashioned vampire bluff.

I adopted the haughtiest tone I could muster. “What did you do to him?”

Gabriel arched an eyebrow, as if surprised I’d challenge his authority, his right to deal with a member of his Pack as he saw fit. After a moment of staring at me, he turned and slid a chair out from the table, then sat down. His posture was negligent—slouchy, legs sprawled, one elbow propped on the table. I wasn’t sure if he was really that unconcerned that a vampire had just walked into . . . well, something, or if it was some kind of ploy.

“You lied to me, Merit.”

“Excuse me?”

Gabriel crossed his legs at the ankles, then traced a circle on the tabletop with a fingertip. My skin began to itch with the pins-and-needles effect of his magic. I fought to hold back my fangs and the silvering of my eyes even as my genetics screamed out, Run, or prepare to fight. Now.

“You told me you learned about the contract on my life because you’d received an anonymous phone call.” He looked up at me, the color in his irises swirling with obvious fury. “That was a lie.”

I met his penetrating gaze with a neutral expression.

Gabriel bobbed his head toward Nick. “In fact, I’ve learned Mr. Breckenridge here was your not-so-anonymous source. A man with whom you’ve had a lengthy personal relationship.”

I frowned at Gabriel. Nick had given me the information because he’d gotten an anonymous phone call. And, yes, I’d had a personal relationship with Nick . . . but in high school.

Confused, I glanced at Nick, who shook his head. “He thinks I did it. Thinks I planned it—the hits. The attempts on his life.”

“You did have the knowledge,” Gabriel said dryly.

Nick barked out a strangled laugh. “With all due respect, Apex, I’m a goddamned reporter. I get tips. It’s my job.”

“He was trying to help you,” I added. “He told me so I could pass along the warning, so you’d know there was a risk of a hit at the conference. That’s why we told you. That’s why we were prepared when the chaos started.”

“I’m now regretting that I called the convocation, that I didn’t just pull the shifters back to Aurora. One shifter—a leader—is dead, and there’s now a division between the rest of them. Do you have any idea how frustrated that makes me? When I trusted you?”

Given the angry magic in the air—and the sulfurous smell of it—I had a pretty good sense of it.

“Nick didn’t do this. He couldn’t have done this. You know he does everything possible to protect you, to protect the Pack. Do you recall a few weeks ago when he tried to bring down our House because he had just a suspicion that we might harm shifters? And you have no right to question my or Ethan’s motivations after what we’ve done this week.”