Кейти Макалистер - Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang

His face twisted into a momentary grimace as a muffled laugh, followed by, “Did she just call him ‘Boo’?” made its way from the vampires. “Would you mind releasing my ear?”

I stared in stupefaction at my fingers closed around his ear. It was turning white. “But . . . you’re dead.”

“Not quite. Nearly, but not quite,” Rowan said, vaulting the recumbent reapers as he strolled over to us. He hesitated a moment. “If I touch you, will you rain light on me again?”

“Eh?” I said, my brain finally catching up with my heart.

He gently took me by the arms and pulled me off of Kristoff. “When we found him, the reapers were in the act of hacking off his head. But he’s always been a fast healer.”

Kristoff sat up, rubbing first his ear, then his throat. I was aghast to see a nasty, jagged-looking welt that wrapped around the front, disappearing into his collar. “It no doubt looked worse than it really was. You could have arrived a bit earlier, however.”

“Traffic,” Andreas said with a shrug.

“You’re not . . .” I looked from Kristoff to Rowan, who had released me, and beyond him to where Alec leaned against the wall, an odd expression on his face. Andreas got to his feet and picked his way across the bodies, stopping to peer at his brother’s neck.

“You’ll do,” he said finally with a nod.

“You guys didn’t . . .” I looked back at Kristoff. “What the hell?”

He sighed and opened his arms, grunting when I threw myself into them, clutching him and kissing every part of him my mouth could reach, babbling the whole time about all my confusion and horror and love.

It took a good ten minutes to work all of that out of my system. Kristoff just held me the whole time, stroking my back and suffering me to examine him to make sure he wasn’t still in some way harmed.

“They almost cut your head off,” I said, pulling down the back of his collar to look at the vile scar that remained. It was still thick, red, and ugly, but was fading with each passing moment.

“‘Almost’ being the key word,” he said.

I spun around, glaring at the people who lay on the floor. The vampires had pulled the two women up onto the couch. “Those . . . scum! Those evil, detestable, repulsive scum!”

The men twitched violently as I stalked toward them slowly, my hands fisted, pulling down light from the moon, which even now glowed gently above the treetops.

“I had no idea your Beloved was so bloodthirsty,” Rowan said. “Are her eyes glowing?”

“Beloved, this is not-” Kristoff started to say.

“Which one did it?” I interrupted. “Which one held the knife?”

“It was a sword, actually,” Rowan said, gesturing toward the man nearest me.

I slammed down a ball of light smack-dab on the man’s groin. He screamed through the duct tape, his body curling into a fetal ball.

“Ooh.” Rowan winced, neatly sidestepping the twitching body. “He won’t be having children now.”

“There’s a lot more he’s not going to be having by the time I get through with him,” I said, stepping forward with dire intent.

Kristoff caught me around the waist and pulled me back. “No, Beloved.”

“Just let me smite them, Kristoff. They all deserve it! You can’t deny they deserve it,” I said, squirming in his grip.

“I don’t, but not this way. You are too sensitive. You will hate yourself once you’ve recovered from your scare, and hate me for letting you do this.”

“One little smiting, that’s all I ask,” I said, struggling. “Just that one, just Sword Boy there.”

“I think ‘boy’ is going to be a moot term,” Andreas said, watching the reaper as he rolled around the floor.

“No,” Kristoff said firmly, his frown deepening into a scowl as he suddenly pushed me to arm’s length, his gaze raking me up and down. “What the hell are you wearing, woman?”

“Pia had a little contretemps with the tree while climbing into the attic,” Alec explained as I hastily tried to cover all my exposed parts.

“Why did you enter that way?” Rowan asked.

Alec gave a little shrug. “I had no idea you two had arrived. My first thought was to protect Pia.”

“Are you going to just stand there letting them ogle you?” Kristoff demanded of me, his eyes dark as the sea in a storm.

“Nobody’s ogling me,” I said, giving him a look.

Kristoff glared over my shoulder. I turned to see his brother and cousin both considering me with their heads tipped identically to the side.

“Nice legs,” Rowan said.

“And ass,” Andreas added. “Is that something sticking out of the top of her panties?”

Kristoff growled. I eep ed, clutched at both the tattered remains of my skirt and Alec’s reaper journal, and looked wildly around the room for a blanket.

Alec sighed and detached himself from the wall. “Upstairs, second room on the right. There should be some women’s things-”

I was off before he finished.

The clothing I found in a guest room closet wasn’t in my size, and the only skirt I could fit into was too tight to be comfortable. I raided the room Kristoff had said was Alec’s, finally making my way downstairs in a pair of silk lounging pants that were a bit snug around the hips, and a worn T-shirt that was also a bit tight. Retrieving my purse from where it had fallen before I fell down the stairs, I put the journal in it and took a moment to comb the twigs out of my hair.

“I have several questions, and I’d like them all answered,” I announced as I finally descended the stairs into the living room. “First of all, where are Magda and Raymond?”

Kristoff eyed my unorthodox outfit. That was the best you could find?

Don’t be impertinent.

“A couple of the reapers were trying to scare them when we arrived. We scared them, instead,” Andreas said with a pointed smile at the woman sitting nearest him.

Her eyes narrowed with spite.

“Your friends left. We thought it would be best if they were not in the way,” Rowan explained.

“OK. They must have gone to find the hotel we were going to head to after this. I’ll call later. Next question-what on earth are you two doing here, evidently rescuing Kristoff, when you were utter and complete bastards, betraying him in Vienna?”

“She likes that word ‘bastard,’ doesn’t she?” Rowan asked Andreas.

“I suppose it’s understandable, given her point of view,” he answered.

“Boo?” I asked, pinning Kristoff with a gimlet eye.

He sighed as the two men snickered, gesturing me to a chair. I sat, but crossed my arms.

You just had to use that name in front of them, didn’t you? They’ll never let me hear the end of it.

You’ll survive. Answer my question .

“They didn’t betray me,” he said, jumping to the side when one of the reapers got his legs around a glass coffee table and sent it tumbling toward Kristoff.

Andreas and Rowan hauled the reaper up onto the chair opposite me. I singed his toes.

“Beloved . . .”

“I’m stopping, I’m stopping. Go on.”

Kristoff looked helplessly at his brother and the other two vampires. “I could use a little help.”

“Oh, no,” Alec said, gesturing toward me. “She’s your Beloved. You can explain the pact to her.”

“Pact? What pact would that be?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at the man who filled my every waking thought.

Kristoff smiled smugly in my mind.

And right now those thoughts lie heavily in the “what’s going to happen if you don’t stop stalling and start spilling” arena .

Kristoff glanced at the reapers, then over to Alec. “Do you mind storing them elsewhere?”

“Not at all,” Alec answered, making a fancy little bow. “Might I suggest the cellar?”