A spray of crimson covered his cuffs. Not his blood.
My nose told me that much.
He must have seen the questions in my face. He ran a hand through dark hair clumped with wet mud and said, “Gil has poor timing and a unique definition of ‘help.’”
There was definitely a story behind that. And I bet it involves the void.
Before I could ask, he took my arm, and steered me toward the door. “We have to leave this city. Immediately.”
“She has Bobby.”
No need to say who ‘she’ was. Nathanial paused, muscles stiffening along his back, but he didn’t say anything as he continued toward the door.
A slumped figure slouched just inside the doorway, a stake protruding from his chest. I blinked, but I didn’t ask any questions—the vamp smelled like the blood on Nathanial’s cuffs.
“Hermit?” a voice whispered behind me.
The skin between my shoulders tightened, and I whirled around. The room was empty. Or, at least, mostly empty. It was little more than some forgotten cellar, and I hadn’t noticed earlier, but the metal coffin I’d been locked in wasn’t the only one in the room.
“Hermit, is that you?” The decidedly female voice issued from a box sitting upright against the far wall.
“Stay here,” Nathanial said. Then he grabbed the crowbar he’d used on my coffin.
He jimmied the lock off the upright coffin before cramming the crowbar into the seam. As Nathanial pushed aside the lid, Samantha stumbled free. She was no longer disguised as Nuri, but neither did she look like the confident, dark-haired woman she’d been during my last night at Death’s Angel.
She lunged for Nathanial, her fangs extended and her thin lips curled back. He didn’t dodge, but held up his wrist. She grabbed it, sinking her fangs deep.
“The hell?” I surged forward, ready to rip her off him.
Nathanial held up a hand and motioned me to stop. I did, but my weight remained on my toes, my muscles twitching with the need to yank her away. After a moment, Samantha pulled back. She licked her now full, pink lips.
“Thank you, Hermit,” she said, straightening.
Nathanial acknowledged her thanks with a nod.
“Chameleon. Did Tatius send a private message for me?”
Samantha pursed her lips, and her appearance changed, melding into a green-haired Tatius. The change was frighteningly accurate, but as this fake Tatius hooked its fingers in the loops of shiny vinyl pants and glanced at me, the eyes held none of the weight of the true Tatius’s stare.
Using his voice, Samantha said, “We can acknowledge that blood both complicates and engenders loyalty, brother. Your blood runs through Kita, but our blood is the same, and we have history. Return. I will reconsider my position on our companion.”
Our companion?
“Those were his exact words?” Nathanial asked.
Samantha shimmered back into her natural, dark-haired appearance. “He made me repeat the message twice.”
Nathanial nodded, the movement slow, as if he could buy himself time to think. Then he turned and held out his hand to me. “Back to Haven?”
“Better the devil you know and all that. What about Bobby?” And Steven. I was responsible for the city-shifter as well.
Nathanial frowned, and Samantha’s plucked eyebrows pinched together.
“Bobby?” she asked.
“A friend.”
“A mortal friend?” At my nod, she waved her hand in a dismissive motion. “Mortal lives are short. We should escape while we can.”
Yeah, that wasn’t an option I was considering. Turning my back on her, I cocked my head, staring at Nathanial.
“We will find him,” he said, “but we must hurry.”
* * * *
“Here,” I whispered, stopping in front of a door and scenting the air.
Samantha—who had merged her appearance into Ronco, an effective but disturbing disguise—leaned against the wall and inspected her knuckles as I sifted through scents. I definitely thought I could probably smell bobcat and wolf.
Damn fickle vampire nose.
A pair of vamps turned the corner ahead of us, and my muscles tensed, my fists curling. I waited, not even breathing. But, after nodding to us, and receiving a nod from Nathanial in return, they kept walking. I had no idea what illusion Nathanial cloaked us in, but it was working. As long as we don’t run into any of the older psychic vamps.
Once the pair vanished around the corner, I pulled open the door and slipped inside, Nathanial and Samantha at my heels. The room beyond was large, dark—and filled with the scent of wounded shapeshifters. Nathanial’s fingers brushed my shoulder, reaching for me, trying to hold me back. It was too late. I was already running. I dashed across the room, headed straight for the tawny haired form slumped in a chair.
“Hey!” someone yelled behind me.
Crap. Guards.
I didn’t slow. Raised voices lifted in my wake, followed by the crunch of bones snapping. Someone grunted. I didn’t look back.
“Bobby?” I knelt beside him and he lifted his head.
His eyes were red and swollen as he looked at me, but his skin was pale. Way too pale. He’d been stripped down to just his pants, and the chains binding him to a chair had sunk into his flesh, ugly welts spreading across his bare chest, his arms.
“I’ll get you free,” I whispered. But how? I couldn’t touch the silver—losing feeling in my fingers wouldn’t help.
Tearing a panel off the bottom of my gown, I wrapped the shiny material around my hands. It protected me from the silver, but the make-shift gloves sabotaged any chance I had of griping the thin silver chains. Dammit.
I glanced back at the door. “Nathanial, help.”
He hurled one vampire into a second, and both slammed into the wall with a thud. The vamps, dead or unconscious, dropped to the floor, leaving a large, man-shaped indention in the wall. They weren’t the only bodies on the floor.
“One got away,” Samantha said, her appearance rippling as she shrank down from Ronco’s form into her own.
“Then we will have company soon.” Nathanial knelt beside me, and I moved over, giving him better access to the chain.
He had to dig into Bobby’s bare back to get the end of the chain. He peeled it away from the skin, the silver taking chunks of flesh with it. Bobby squinted his swollen eyes, the muscles in his face twitching, and his lips curling back, but he didn’t make a sound as the chain pulled away.
I cupped his large hand in mine and pressed my cheek against his knee, but that was as much comfort as I could offer. There was nothing I could do about the pain, and though the energy of his beast rolled off him in prickly waves, he couldn’t shift and heal until the silver was away from his skin.
“We have to hurry,” Samantha said, her eyes focused on the door.
“Unwrap Steven,” I told her, pointing at the shifter in the other chair. He wasn’t moving, his chest barely lifting.
She glared at me, and I thought for a moment she was going to pull the vampire equivalent of rank on me, but then she turned and grabbed the silver chain binding Steven. She yanked, tearing chain and flesh. The shifter screamed and the energy pouring off him filled the room. My skin crawled, feeling too tight for my body.
“Too much,” Bobby whispered, the words clumsy from his swollen lips.
“I know.” I squeezed his hand. “It’s almost over.”
“Not me. Steven.”
Rogue?
I jumped to my feet just as Samantha jerked the last chain free. Steven lunged from the chair, his body slamming into Samantha. The silver would have weakened him, so it must have been her surprise that allowed him to knock her to the ground. He screamed in her face, his twisted, rage-filled agony turning the scream into a howl.
I surged forward. Before I reached him, the skin down his back split. A glistening spine poked free, muscles bunching, reshaping. I skid to a stop.
“Samantha, get out from under him.”
Her eyes were wide, and I wasn’t sure she’d heard me as she stared at the man shifting on top of her. I grabbed her arms, pulling her free. You didn’t touch shifters mid-change—the magic that reformed a shifter’s body could do strange things to anyone who interfered. We couldn’t do anything but wait as Steven’s joints popped, his organs rearranging.
Wait, and hope he came out of the change sane.
I didn’t hold out a lot of hope. A day wrapped in silver could challenge any shifter’s sanity, and Steven had already been unstable. Seconds passed, the change progressing agonizingly slow. Tagged shifters were like that, their change sometimes taking several minutes to complete.
“What is the meaning of this?” a cold voice demanded from the doorway.
I whirled around. A group of enforcers poured into the room, Ronco leading the charge. Elizabeth slipped inside as a prim figure in a cold gray dress stepped through the doorway.
The Collector had arrived.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“I expected more from you, Hermit. You had so much potential.” The Collector shook her head. “Such a waste.” Her pupils dilated, her irises disappearing in the expanding darkness.
My heart hammered in my chest, my mouth going dry.
Vamp tricks. Of course she went straight to vamp tricks.
My feet itched to slink away, to hide, but I couldn’t do that. Steven was in the midst of shifting, and Bobby wasn’t free yet. They’d bound him in enough chains to hold ten shifters, and Nathanial was still untangling the mess.
Samantha stared at the mess that was Steven, her eyes frozen wide. So that just left me. And I had to do something.
“We had a deal. You have your shifters. Now let us go,” I said, ignoring the fact we had obviously been trying to free said shifters.
The Collector’s attention slammed into me, and I cringed.
Her power snarled at the edges of my mind, swathing my peripheral in darkness. But her concentration wasn’t what it usually was. Her gaze darted to Steven’s changing form as if she couldn’t help herself. Couldn’t take her eyes off his shift.