• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Just go, Jason, put some bandages on the scrapes.”

“Scrapes hell, if I were human, you’d be taking me to the emergency room. Remember, Anita, you have some of the strength of both a vampire and a werewolf. We can punch our finger through someone’s ribs.”

“Are you really hurt?” I asked, all joking aside, I didn’t want him hurt.

“Not permanently, but it’ll heal almost human slow.”

“I’m sorry, Jason.” I remembered enough to say, “And thanks for taking care of me.”

His grin faded, and something close to a serious look spilled through his eyes, then it was gone, hidden behind another smile. “All in a day’s work, ma’am.” He tipped an imaginary hat and started to shut the door. “I’d turn on the lamp before I close the door, it’s damn dark without windows.”

I reached over and switched on a small lamp beside the clock, on top of the little refrigerator. The glow seemed unnaturally bright.

“Your cell phone is on the floor on my side of the bed. I dropped it when you started convulsing.”

“I was not convulsing,” I said.

“Oh, sorry, I dropped it when you had your raging, overwhelming, screaming orgasm. Was that better? It sounded better didn’t it?”

“Go clean up,” I said, sounding grumpy when I said it.

He was laughing as he closed the door.

I was left alone with the little lamp, the big bed, and no clothes in sight. I was about to debate on whether to try and find some clothes before hunting up my phone, when it rang again. I scrambled across the bed, jerking the sheets off so they wouldn’t tangle me. I half slid, half fell to the floor and found my phone by sitting on it.

It was Dolph, and he wasn’t happy. While he’d been waiting for me, there had been a second call, to a second crime scene. He was pissed with Jason’s antics on the phone, with both crime scenes, and especially, it seemed, with me.

16

THE FIRST CRIME scene was in Wildwood, that new bastion of money and social climbing. The hot addresses used to be Ladue, Clayton, Creve Coeur, but they’ve all become passé. Nope, the hot new place to be is Wildwood. The fact that it’s in the middle of freaking nowhere doesn’t seem to dissuade the nouveau riche, or wanna-be rich. Personally, the only reason I lived in the middle of nowhere, at a much less fashionable address, was the fact that I didn’t want to get my neighbors shot up.

By the time Jason had driven through all the windy roads that led to the murder scene, we’d found out several things. First, my eyes were light sensitive, so my sunglasses were my friends. Second, my stomach didn’t like the twisting roads. We hadn’t had to stop so I could throw up, which was good, since unless we pulled into someone’s drive, there was no shoulder to the road. It was bordered by woods, hills, tame wilderness, where real wolves no longer roam and even the black bears have found deeper holes to hide in.

Normally I love a drive through the country. Today all the bright greens meant was that when my vision swirled, it did it in Technicolor green like a frog smeared across my vision, which actually made the nausea worse.

“How can you endure this?” I asked.

“If you’d slept the day away like a normal pomme de sang or human servant, you wouldn’t be sick at all.”

“Forgive me for having a day job.”

“Also if Asher had taken enough for just a feeding, then you might be a bit sick,” he negotiated a turn, “but I think that whatever Asher did to you along with taking blood made it worse.” He paused. “Truthfully, you shouldn’t be this sick, at all.”

We crested the rise, and the soft hills stretched out for miles, shades of green with a hint of gold here and there.

“At least I’m not nauseous, anymore when I look at the trees.”

“That’s good, but I mean it, Anita. After you’d slept, and then gotten up and around, you should have been fine.” He took the next curve carefully, a lot slower than he’d taken the first one.

“So what went wrong?” I asked.

He shrugged, and slowed even further, trying to see the address