Eileen Wilks: Blood Challenge

She dragged her forearm across her face, smearing the wet around rather than getting rid of it, and scowled.

Werewolfs Whore.

That was spray painted in black across the hood of her government-issue Ford. The perp had forgotten the apostrophe, but he’d added a PS of sorts on the trunk: Fucking Bitch Traitor .

One of her neighbors? She considered that as her heartbeat settled. They had easy access, but otherwise they weren’t a good fit.

The rabid haters—the ones most likely to escalate from words to actions—fell in a predictable demographic. There were exceptions, such as the guy who’d killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum. He’d been nearly ninety. But chances were that the asshole who’d defaced her ride was a white, heterosexual male between the ages of twenty and sixty, and either unemployed or working a dead-end job. He probably also hated gays and immigrants, blacks and Jews—everyone he could blame for having upset “the natural order.” The natural order would have him on top. Since he was miles and miles away from that spot, someone was clearly at fault.

Lily had plenty of neighbors who fit the age and sex demographic. Some might hate their jobs, too, but they weren’t bottom-of-the-heap workers. The high-rise she lived in these days had correspondingly high rents.

But not all haters were financially challenged. Robert Friar proved that.

Lily shook her head. Hell of a way to end a good run, finding this shit. Really messed with all those endorphins she’d produced. If the perp had still been around, she might have gotten back some of that high by kicking his sorry ass, but she was alone in the parking garage … except for a few of her neighbors.

The Prius pulling out of its spot now belonged to a single mom on the second floor. Wendy Something. Wendy left about this time every weekday with the kids so she could drop them at day care. She was white, brown and brown, under forty, and worked at some bank—Lily couldn’t remember which one—and looked tired all the time. Highly unlikely that she’d spray bad words on a car with her kids watching.

The man crossing the cement to his Lexus left around seven every weekday, too. He was in management at some alphabet-soup company. He was overweight, well-groomed, around forty, and Hispanic. Black and brown, with some gray mixed with the black. Fifth floor, she thought. He was possible, but only just.

Then there was the motorcycle she’d seen tearing out of the garage as she approached it. Jack was a nice guy in a resoundingly unsuccessful band. He got the occasional modeling job, too, but could never have afforded the rent if not for his boyfriend, who had some kind of trust fund. Said boyfriend was, in Lily’s opinion, an asshole, but not the sort of asshole who got up before seven A.M. to spray-paint insults on an FBI agent’s car.

It was unlikely the perp was still present. She kept her senses tuned anyway as she took her phone from the armband she used on a run. She used it to take a few pictures of the damage, then checked out the surveillance cameras.

Didn’t seem to be damaged, so maybe they’d get a look at the asshole who’d defaced her ride. It would be nice to know for sure it wasn’t anyone she shared the elevator with.

Of course, to see the images from the cameras, she’d have to tell Rule. He owned the building. Or rather, his father did, but it really belonged to the clan. Nokolai clan, that is. Rule had two clans now, and that was another source of trouble.

Lily got in the elevator and punched the button for the tenth floor. She did not want to tell Rule. She’d have to, but she didn’t want to. She hadn’t realized how overly protective he’d gotten until the heat wave broke and she could abandon the treadmill to run outside again. He didn’t want her running alone. At first he’d found reasons to join her, but when he couldn’t he’d tried sending one or two of his guards along.

She’d put a stop to that. Sure, there’d been a situation last month when the guards had been useful. But that case, that situation, was over. His caution was excessive and annoying, and that was half the reason she didn’t want to tell him about her car.

The other half was the guilt. Rule was all too grimly certain to blame himself for the vandalism, and that was harder for her to deal with because she couldn’t get mad about it. She even understood. She’d handled similar feelings herself, worrying about how their upcoming marriage would affect him.

When Rule asked her to marry him, he’d broken a centuries-old taboo for his people. When she accepted, she’d given the haters of the world a new target. Her.

The elevator dinged. Lily got off and turned left. Rule had a corner unit. No, they had a corner unit. It had been four months now since she let her old apartment go; longer than that since they basically started living together … and nearly a year since she first saw him, sitting in the cacophony and bad lighting that was Club Hell.

Nearly a year since her life changed, and changed, and changed again. Time to stop thinking of it as his place.

Maybe if she bought some new pillows or a rug …

Two of Rule’s bodyguards stood in front of the apartment door, this set being from Leidolf clan. She’d decided to think of them as nosy but well-intentioned neighbors—like a lot of really buff Mrs. Kravitzes from Bewitched —only with guns and a disconcerting willingness to lay down their lives, if necessary.

They both looked young. One of them really was. Jeffrey Lane was twenty-four, barely an adult in lupi eyes, one of the two Leidolf Rule had brought to San Diego to be trained as guards.

“Jeff,” she said as she approached. “What were you thinking?”

The shorter of the two touched his hair self-consciously. “Hey, it’s California, right?”

“It’s pink.”

He grinned. “I already got in trouble for it. José says I don’t blend in. But, you know, I thought out here—”

“You see a lot of guys with pink hair in this building?” the taller man said. “In some of those clubs where you like to hang out, maybe, but not here where Rule lives. You don’t blend in here.” LeBron shook his head, which he’d recently begun shaving. Combined with his height and build, it gave him the look of a café au lait Mr. Clean, only without the earring.

Jeff tried to look abashed. He wasn’t good at it.

“Have a good run?” LeBron asked Lily.

“Pretty good.” She didn’t mention her car. That was FBI business, not a matter for either clan. Besides, she wouldn’t have told her nosy neighbor about it, would she? “We’re supposed to get some rain today. Think it’ll happen?”

“You mean it really does rain in San Diego?” LeBron said. “I thought that was, like, a myth. Something you tell newcomers to see if they’ll swallow it.”

The Leidolf guards were from North Carolina—green, wet North Carolina. She shook her head. “Damn. You’re on to me. Have you heard from Samuel? He get that job?”

LeBron had two sons, both grown. Samuel was the younger one. LeBron looked maybe a decade older than Jeff, but he was closer to sixty than thirty. Of course, that was young—for a lupus. They didn’t hit middle age until eighty or so.

“No word yet, but he thought the interview went well.”

“Let me know when you hear.” Lily used her own key on the door. Either of the men could have opened it for her, but she preferred to do that herself. She liked to think that was good sense—it left their hands and their attention free for any sudden threats—but deep down she knew there was a healthy dollop of denial involved, too.

If she opened the door herself, she could pretend they didn’t have keys.