Kelley Armstrong - Otherworld Chills

“Tina?” she whispered.

Tina kept scratching at the floor.

Vanessa moved to her side and lowered herself on one knee. She could hear Tina’s breathing, shallow and labored. When she touched the woman’s shoulder, Tina didn’t tense, didn’t react at all, just kept scratching the floor.

She gripped Tina’s shoulders with both hands, her fire extinguished, her gun on the floor, intentionally leaving herself vulnerable. Tina still didn’t respond. Vanessa carefully turned her over and—

She sucked in a breath. Tina’s throat was … Vanessa had seen Malcolm’s other two victims, their throats savaged, a bloody mess of tissue and gore. He hadn’t done that to Tina. He’d slit her throat just enough to let her bleed out. Slowly.

Vanessa’s burning fingertips flew to Tina’s neck, pulling the flesh together and then cauterizing the wound to stop the bleeding. Field medicine learned from another fire half-demon on Rhys’s team.

She closed the wound, but when she looked at Tina, she knew it was too late. The critical blood loss was back there, a dozen feet away. Tina still breathed, heart pumping, but her eyes were empty, her hand flexing as if she was still scratching at that floor, the instinct for survival outlasting all other mental functions.

Vanessa told herself she was wrong. Had to be wrong. Tina was alive. Just in shock. The wound was cauterized and now they just needed to get her to help.

She whipped around, looking for Nick, annoyed that he wasn’t already here to help. When she caught a flicker of motion, she remembered why he wasn’t and grabbed for her gun, but it was only Nick, leaping from the second floor as easily as if it’d been a two-foot hop.

“We need to get her help. There’s a clinic—”

“She’s gone, Vanessa,” he said softly.

“No, she’s breathing. She’s alive. She can get a transfusion. Help me lift—”

“Vanessa?” He took her shoulder and, before she could throw him off, turned her to look down at Tina, lying unmoving on the floor.

“No,” she whispered. She dropped to her knees and looked into Tina’s eyes, wide and staring blankly. Then she heard a rattle, deep in the woman’s chest.

“She’s alive. She …”

Tina’s lips parted, and she exhaled. Then she went still.

Vanessa’s hands slammed down on Tina’s chest, pumping, starting CPR. She knew it was useless. She’d known she couldn’t save Tina from the moment she saw that hole in her throat and that look in her eyes. Tina had been lost before they even made it to the building.

That didn’t stop Vanessa from performing CPR, even as she swore she could feel Tina’s body cooling. At last, she felt Nick’s hand on her shoulder, fingers resting there, telling her what she already knew—they had to go.

Vanessa pulled back and stared down at Tina. The hole in her throat was almost medically precise in its placement. No knife had made it, though. The edges were jagged, as if Malcolm had … She wasn’t even sure how you’d do that. Bite? Rip? Whatever he’d done, there was no way Tina sat still and took it. Yet it would be impossible to be that precise with a struggling—

She bent and ran her hands over Tina’s head. There it was. A goose egg, also expertly placed. He’d brought her here, questioned her, knocked her out, and then cut her throat. That’s why there’d been one blood pool. Tina had been bleeding out and then regained consciousness and crawled away.

Vanessa rose. Nick had moved off now, scouting the area and occasionally dropping into a crouch, presumably sniffing.

“It was definitely Malcolm,” he said, though she knew he was checking for her benefit only. He knew who this was. No one else would be this sadistic.

“It wasn’t a trap for us, was it?” she said. “He didn’t even stick around to watch her die.”

“It would seem not,” he said slowly, looking around.

“You don’t detect any sign of him, do you?”

“No, it’s just … It seems odd.”

“Only if you presume he knew someone would come after Tina tonight, which would have been nearly impossible if we weren’t relatively close already.” She reached down to touch the pool of blood. It was already tacky. “It’s been at least an hour. Maybe two.”

“And he tired of waiting, I suppose. I’ll hide her body for now. You have someone who can come to retrieve it?”

“First thing in the morning. For now, I need to notify Rhys.”

Vanessa retreated to a corner to do that. She kept her back to Tina’s body. It was the only way she could focus. Seven years on the job, and she’d never lost an agent. She’d been so proud of her record, and now she realized it’d been dumb luck. No matter how many precautions you took, it was never enough. There was always something to miss, blame to take—

She pushed away the thought and went to notify Rhys.

Nick circled the room as Vanessa texted Rhys. There was no reason for Malcolm to give Tina that slow death if no one would witness it. Had Malcolm known her backup was coming? Having been an operative himself, he’d know that the phone call he’d interrupted would have triggered backup, possibly even from someone already in the city.

So why wasn’t Malcolm here? Nick was quite certain he’d left—the trail he found was cold, and when he followed it as far as he dared, it continued on toward the back of the building. There was no trace of Malcolm’s scent in the surrounding rooms to suggest he’d lain in wait.

This was, admittedly, the point where he’d normally turn to Elena or Clay and say, “What do you make of this?” That would be the extent of his responsibility.

He circled the room one last time. Then he stopped short.

“We need to go,” he said, turning to Vanessa.

She was still on the phone and raised a finger, telling him to hold on.

He strode over. “No, we need to leave. It’s a trap. We’re in a building with at least three dead bodies and—”

As if on cue, he picked up the distant creak of a floorboard.

“ Now ,” he said.

She signed off. “We need to move Tina—”

“Too late. Someone’s coming.”

“We should wait,” she said. “Hide and see what’s going on.”

“I know. But not here. Come on.”

Nick and Vanessa watched as three people stood around Tina’s body. Three men dressed in dark clothing, two holding guns, the third a knife. Big guns—.45 caliber, he’d guess. The knife wasn’t small, either, and judging by the bulge under the guy’s jacket, he had a gun there, too.

They weren’t werewolves. Nick could tell that from their hiding spot, the men’s scent drifting far enough to pick up. They looked like … Well, that was the thing. To the untrained eye, they looked like commandos or mercenaries, like guys who’d work for someone like Rhys. Except, having met people who worked for Rhys, Nick knew that real mercenaries dressed and acted like ordinary people. Blending in.

These guys looked like they were in a mercenary role-playing game. They were physically suited to the role, at least the stereotype of it. None over forty years old or under six feet tall. All square-jawed and bristle-haired. It’d be an amusing spectacle, actually, if they weren’t standing over the corpse of a woman he’d known.

It’d also be more amusing if those guns weren’t so damned big.

One dropped to his knee beside Tina.

“Looks different than the others,” one of his companions said.

“Different but the same. Still a werewolf kill.”

Nick tensed. They knew they were stalking a werewolf?

The guy continued. “Seems as if he got interrupted here. Started tearing out her throat and something stopped him.”