Faith Hunter - Blood Cross

I felt a warmth start in my belly and move up and out. “You offering yourself?” I hooked my thumbs into my leather pockets and dropped my weight on one hip. “For what?”

“For . . .” He stopped, his mouth quirking up, revealing the crooked tooth on his lower jaw. “For whatever you might want. We could start out with wild monkey sex and see what develops.”

The heat shot through me, hard and fast, like gunning a bike motor and hitting the road with a growl of tire on asphalt. “I need a shower. And I have a houseful of houseguests.”

Rick let his smile spread. “I have a shower. And a hot tub out back under the stars. Course I live in a single-wide trailer. It may not be up to your standards.”

“Don’t let the fancy house fool you. It’s Katie’s. My usual digs consist of an efficiency rental under the eaves of Old Lady Pierson’s house. I have a shower but no hot tub, and if I did, Old Lady Pierson would want to join us.”

“Hot to trot?”

“Nosy.”

“My place it is, then. I can take you to your bike. You can follow me home?”

“Oh yeah.”

He didn’t touch me. Just turned and led the way, flipping a nonchalant wave to Jodi on the way by. I walked in his wake and sat in the passenger seat of the unmarked. He climbed in the driver side and started the engine. And pulled slowly past the other vehicles lining the road.

Leo sat in the rental, the window down, blood on his lips. I was pretty sure it was Bliss’s blood. He took a breath that looked odd, not quite needed, not quite human when his chest moved, but he didn’t notice me. He was healing her the way vamps healed, with sips of blood and a slow laving of tongue.

Bruiser stood on the sidewalk, staring at the car, catching my gaze. Holding it. No question in his eyes, no accusation. Just an uncomfortable patience and a quiet strength. But I’d made my choice. I didn’t want a blood-servant, no matter how powerful and sensual and . . . No. Not a blood-servant. I wanted a human. I wanted this human. And mostly, I didn’t want to share. I was pretty sure he read all that in my eyes. His gaze followed us as we moved out of sight, his mouth lifting at the corner, his expression plain in the side mirror.

By the time the night was over, I was tired and happy and satisfied, taking up more than my share of Rick’s bed in exhausted contentment. I wasn’t going home just yet. I figured it was best to give the Trueblood family time to reconnect alone anyway. According to Bruiser, who called on my cell just after sunrise to fill me in, Leo’s reaction to what he learned at the battle site didn’t result in a vamp bloodbath, but it was close. And the council—the ones still healthy after Leo finished punishing his rivals—was in pretty big disarray, not that I cared. The Blood Master of the City was intent on forcing certain new policies down their throats and they were going to have to give in, including bringing the witch/vamp cold war out of the past and to the bargaining table. They didn’t have a choice. Killing children—even witch children—was worthy of death sentence in the Vampira Carta. And Leo was fulfilling the law with a new purge. This time there would be no forgiveness.

I listened to Bruiser’s spiel while hanging head and shoulders off the bed, my legs twined with Rick’s, his fingers tracing lazy circles on the back of my thigh.

“You’re likely in danger for a while. The remaining renegades that Leo’s chasing down have sworn blood vengeance on you.” He sounded worried. “I want you to take care.”

I laughed sourly. “I did the job the council hired me for, stopped a vamp war in the process, and brought the witches into the vamp’s archaic treaty process. All in one night. Far as I can see, it’s all good. You tell them I expect payment ASAP. In full.” Taking a page from the locals, I disconnected.

“That your other boyfriend?” Rick asked.

Shock zinged through me and I rolled back on the bed, on top of him, slinging my hair out of the way. “ Other boyfriend?”

“If you want to call me that.”

“I’ll think about it. But if had a boyfriend, there’d be only the one.”

“Hmmm,” Rick murmured. The vibration of his deliberation rumbled like a big purr. “Wonder if he knows that?”

When I left New Orleans for a stint in the mountains, a chance to clear my head and let Beast run and hunt, the vamp world was vastly different.

In a matter of days, the vamp hierarchy had been realigned, with some vamp clan leaderships decimated and their members absorbed by others in a purge that had to set records. The vamp-war-that-might-have-been never made the papers, but I talked with Bruiser and Troll often enough to keep up with the gossip. And I stayed out of Leo’s hair. He was a bit too bloodthirsty for me to call on him right now.

When the depths of the rebellion had come to light, Leo killed some of his own scions who had signed on to the wrong side, and then he took over the vamp council, appointing his loyal scions as new clan masters in rival clans. I’d heard that he had forced the blood sharing that cemented their—and his—positions. By all accounts, the bloodbath I’d been expecting had happened in the end but it hadn’t quite been war and was over now.

I spent the days between the last battle and my trip north getting to know my new boyfriend, sitting in his hot tub, and riding his horses. Eating a lot of steak. Meeting his family, for pity’s sake. And having a lot of . . . well . . . Beast was happy. When I wasn’t with Rick, I was getting ready to say good-bye to Molly and Angelina. It was a bittersweet parting, because I knew it would be a while before my life would be back to normal, back living in the mountains. And because a rift had opened between Big Evan and me. He wasn’t a forgiving man, and the fact that my lifestyle had placed his children in life-threatening danger was a hard one to pardon. I was having a pretty hard time forgiving it myself, so I wasn’t holding it against him.

I hadn’t had to report in person to the vamp council, which was a relief, but I did have to write a full report for the ones left alive after the city’s blood-master took his vengeance on the rebels. An amended report went to the police, as informational as my contract with the vamp council allowed, which meant a lot was left out. However, since I was sleeping with a cop, NOPD got a lot of info from an “unnamed source” and no one complained.

The cure for vamp insanity had indeed been worth going to war over. If the Rousseaus had succeeded—and it looked as though they had been close—my world would never have been the same. Baldy, Tristan, Renee, Rafael, and Adrianna had been five fingers of a huge fist. Together, they would have pounded Leo. One of them would have taken over as master of the city. Every vamp in the world would have done homage to Leo’s successor. The other four would have had their choice of cities anywhere in the world. So, Rafael had wooed Adrianna away from her master and mind-joined with her, kidnapped Bettina, and made ready to challenge Leo.

I shipped the fifteen paintings detailing the vamp/witch dark magic back to Asheville to Evangelina. I figured she’d burn them, which made a lot of sense to me, but then, Evangelina was big on history and stuff like that, so maybe she would just put them someplace safe.

Settling with Derek was easy—I just deposited his checks. We didn’t have a lovey-dovey relationship.

My own payment and a hefty bonus supplied by the new vamp council went a long way to giving me peace of mind. I made a donation to Hicklin’s family by dropping a wad of cash in a donation box near the closed casket. I learned his name at the funeral. Corporal Leon Alphonse Hicklin had been home on leave between stints in Afghanistan and was killed trying to stop a robbery, according to the police reports. He was buried with full honors.