Sharon Ashwood - Unchained

They’d all had a lot to say: You didn’t just stake patrons. You! Fine! Them! Suspension. Union rep. News media. Nonhuman-rights cases. Blah, blah. Vampire dust hard to clean out of carpet. Blah, blah.

How were the police supposed to confirm identification? Did he have any distinguishing features? What? Like the fangs? Look, lady, don’t need the attitude. Blah, blah-de-blah.

Ashe produced the wallet card with her international hunting license. That calmed them down.

Reynard produced a government-issued nonhuman ID card. Apparently Mac, once a detective with the local police, had made all the guardsmen get them. It worked almost as well as the license, once Mac’s name was mentioned. The demon ex-cop still had allies on the force.

Fortunately, Mrs. F. and Gina stuck around and gave their accounts. Both painted Ashe and Reynard as a cross between archangels and superheroes. The young student the vampire had grabbed was identified and tracked down by phone. She’d give a statement tomorrow, but right then she was too afraid to leave her house. Daylight was better.

Grudgingly, the cop in charge let Ashe go if she promised to show up at the station and make a formal statement. Hunters got away with murder as long as they signed the right forms.

Her boss was less easily assuaged. Since vampicide wasn’t covered in the Fairview Library’s “Interdepartmental Manual of Standards”—fondly referred to as the FLIMSy—Ashe was suspended without pay pending review by the board of directors. She was advised to call her shop steward in the morning.

By that point, she didn’t care anymore. She’d care after she’d had something to eat and hugged her daughter.

“Where are you going?” Reynard asked. He stood in the staff room doorway, arms crossed, a bandage around one wrist to cover the vampire bite. He wasn’t quite slouching—his posture was relentlessly upright—but the casual clothes made him look more relaxed. Or maybe that was just the buzz from a touch of after-stake snogging.

Ashe didn’t reply at once, but kept stuffing all the junk she’d left in the staff room over the last couple of months in a plastic bag. If it turned out she was fired, she didn’t want to have to come back to claim a bunch of plastic food containers and old magazines she’d claimed from the discard pile.

Besides, it gave her an excuse not to look at him. She wasn’t embarrassed by the kiss, but it raised some questions she wasn’t ready to deal with at the moment. Such as, maybe she was more ready to move on from Roberto than she had fully realized. The embrace had jolted something in her awake. Something she didn’t even want to go back to sleep.

Mixed up with confusion and worry and stress, it wasn’t a comfortable feeling. Still, the kiss had been . . . wow.

“It was the venom,” Reynard said. “I apologize.”

He sounded more satisfied than sorry.

“Yeah, okay.” Ashe opened the fridge, checked the shelves for comfort food worth stealing. “The venom made you do it.”

Goddess! Ashe couldn’t keep on thinking about that kiss on an empty stomach. The memory made her dizzy enough as it was. It was taking all her resolve not to throw him on the staff room table and repeat the error of their ways—common sense, motherhood, and sanity be damned. And he had the gall to apologize, like he’d dinged her bumper. Ooh, bad metaphor.

“Is there a different apology that would please you better?” Sarcastic, this time.

“No woman likes to hear she was kissed due to a lapse of judgment.”

“Blast it, Ashe!” Reynard was suddenly next to her. He grabbed her wrist, his casual strength nearly enough to lift her off her feet. “Listen to me.”

Ashe stared into his eyes, letting her anger show. No one handled her like that and kept his fingers. “What?”

He bared his teeth, a gesture between a grimace and a snarl. “Don’t you see? If I felt the venom, I’m losing the powers that being a guardsman give me. I’m separated from my life force. I’m starting to fade.”

She expected to see fear in his storm-colored eyes, but instead there was furious defiance. She knew what that rage felt like. It had been riding her when she staked her first vampire.

“Then you don’t have much time left,” she said, fear filling her mouth with a sour, metallic tang.

“I don’t have much life left.” He let go of her wrist, stepped back. “I shouldn’t have kissed you, but I bloody enjoyed it.”

That sounded honest. She shut the fridge. “Forgiven.”

He held her gaze intently, as if he were willing her to understand. “I have to work fast, before I decide to hell with spending eternity in a dungeon. I am far too tempted to live while I can. It’s a poor choice between death and eternal darkness.”

The starkness of his words took her breath away. Her tongue went thick and dry. “I said I’d help you. You’re going to live if I have to take you back to Mac drunk in a wheelbarrow with your urn strapped to your forehead.”

“That’s a charming image.”

“I play rough.”

He gave her a smoking look that said the venom story was only half-true. Captain Reynard knew what he liked, and there was only a thin sliver of civilization holding him back. Had he played too long with monsters, or had he been born with that wild streak? She could nearly taste it, a trace of the savage in the air. He could change his mind in a moment, and she would be the one on the table. Yowza.

Ashe felt a low, sweet burning in her belly, but it was wounded by sadness. The mix of desire and sorrow reminded her too much of her husband and his senseless end. Ashe looked away, swallowing down a sudden ache in her throat. Back to business. She knew the head librarian was waiting outside, ready to show her the door.

“I have to pick up my daughter. The after-school care was good enough to take her to my grandmother’s.”

Guilt felt like a fine dust coating her skin, so ingrained it merely smudged when she tried to brush it away. Good mothers didn’t miss pickup time because they were explaining themselves to the cops. Goddess, what happens if I lose my job for good?

Reynard seemed to read her face. A furrow of concern formed between his eyebrows, and he brushed warm fingertips down her cheek. She stiffened, but didn’t pull away. The touch was caring, not intrusive. She just wasn’t used to having a man around anymore.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked.

“No. Come with me. We need to talk. You came to me for help. I haven’t forgotten that, and we can’t waste any more time.” Abruptly, she started for the door.

He fell into step beside her. “Where are we going?”

“To Grandma’s house.”

He gave her a sidelong look. “According to the old tales, isn’t there a wolf at Grandmother’s house?”

Ashe smiled sweetly. “So you’ve met Grandma.”

Ashe stopped at the supermarket en route. She wasn’t going to show up empty-handed, especially since her grandmother had probably fed Eden dinner. Although Grandma loved Eden’s visits, to Ashe it felt Although Grandma loved Eden’s visits, to Ashe it felt like freeloading unless she contributed something to the meal—and right now, she needed every scrap of pride she could cling to.

“I’ll be quick,” she said to Reynard, who had been largely silent throughout his first car ride. Except for a wide-eyed look, he was handling his introduction to the technological age with surprising calm.

“Take your time,” he said, reaching out to run his hand over the air vent, the glove box, and the gearshift with reverent fascination. “The pictures on the television don’t truly capture the feel of riding in one of these.”

Ashe bit her lip. He was a man besotted. Wisdom said touching would lead to fondling, which would lead to ignition. Ashe took the keys, just in case. As little as she liked the SUV, she needed it in one piece. Oh, honey, just wait till you get a load of my motorcycle.