Chapter Twenty-eight
I stared at Sullivan lying so still on the ground, surrounded by glass and speckles of drying blood, then lifted my gaze to the shadow hovering in the hall.
I wasn’t certain if things had just gotten better or worse, until the shadow moved, and the moonlight glinted off a pirate earring.
“You okay?” Devon Murphy knelt next to Sullivan and checked his pulse.
Strangely enough, the first thing I noticed was that he’d removed the beads from his hair, though the feathers remained.
“Anne?” Murphy snapped his fingers under my nose. “You hurt?”
“Your beads,” was all I could say.
“Shock,” he muttered. “Happens every time.”
“I liked those beads. Why’d you take them out?”
“Too hard to sneak up on werewolves when they’re clacking away.”
“Oh. Makes sense. You sneak up on a lot of them, do you?”
“More than I’d like.” He set the dart gun against the wall and pulled his dark T-shirt over his head.
“Here.”
He tossed the garment and it hit me in the face, then fell to the floor. He sighed. “Anne, put on the shirt.
I’ll attract less attention without one than you will.”
I finally realized I stood topless in the moonlight. I flushed and dived for the shirt as Murphy turned to Sullivan.
“Is he—”
“Out for the count?” He yanked the dart from Sullivan’s back. “Yes. And he should stay that way for several hours. Long enough for me to get him in a cage.”
Sense was slowly seeping into my brain. “How did you know I was in trouble?”
“I’ve been following you since you left our place. Cassandra wouldn’t let you just wander around unprotected.” He flicked a thumb at the man on the floor. “You were wolf bait.”
“Hey!”
“Sorry,” he said. “We aren’t the nicest people in the world when it comes to taking care of business.”
“Who’s we and what business?”
“Can’t tell you that.”
I frowned. “Who can? Considering I was wolf bait, I deserve some kind of answer.”
“I agree, but I’m not in charge.” Leaning down, he grabbed Sullivan’s ankles and pulled him across the floor. “My truck’s outside. Wanna give me a hand?”
I didn’t plan to go near Sullivan ever again. He scared the living hell out of me. Which was so strange, since up until a few days ago I’d felt safe whenever I was near him.
Luckily Murphy didn’t appear to actually need my help; he dragged Sullivan into the hall. I followed, stopping at the door, then hurrying over to dig through the garbage in the corner until I recovered my fanny pack. I didn’t plan to let the sharp silver instrument it contained out of range again.
By the time I j oined Murphy, he was lugging Sullivan’s dead weight up a metal riser that reached from the ground to the back of his vehicle. Not a truck really, but a big white cargo van—the preferred mode of transportation for serial killers everywhere.
I narrowed my eyes. “What are you going to do with him?”
“Does it matter?” His voice was strained as he muscled Sullivan into the van, pulled up the riser, then closed the door.
The windows were tinted. He put a padlock through the handles and snapped it shut. I glanced in through the driver’s side and discovered the back of the van was separated from the front by heavy fencing that appeared to be silver. Murphy didn’t fool around.
I hesitated before answering his question. Did it matter? If we were talking about the thing I’d just encountered in the abandoned building, he couldn’t die quickly enough for me. But the man? He was worth saving.
“He can be cured?” I asked.
“That’s what Cassandra tells me.”
“With voodoo?”
“He wasn’t cursed; he was bitten. Voodoo won’t help him.”
“What will?”
“There’s a woman who has the power to put them back the way they were before.”
“What kind of power?”
“I don’t know. Something spooky.”
Once I would have classified Murphy with the crazies: now I wasn’t so sure. I’d seen a werewolf. Hell, I’d seen two. Who was I to say some unknown woman didn’t have the power to make things right?
“Where is she?” I asked.
“On her way. We’ll keep Sullivan at the Ruelle place until she gets here. She had an emergency to deal with first.”
“Is she a doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Tell her he’s got a pretty bad thigh wound.”
“I doubt it.”
“He was bleeding all over—”
“Werewolves heal, freakishly fast. By the time she sees him, he’ll be fine.” Devon tilted his head, and his earring gleamed. “How’d you get a lick in anyway?”
I grimaced, thinking of Sullivan’s threat to lick me all over. “A lick?”
“How’d you wound him?” he clarified.
“I didn’t. The other wolf—”
He tensed. “What other wolf?”
“Black, blue eyes. You didn’t see—”
I stopped. The thing had taken off before Murphy arrived, probably because he’d heard Murphy coming.
Murphy’s gaze swept the area. From the tension in his arms and chest, which I could see easily since I now wore his shirt, he was not only hyper-alert but nervous.
I followed his lead. The abandoned buildings were gray shadows against the indigo night. Nothing moved but us and the wind. If the black wolf was here, I couldn’t see him. If the woman I’d followed was around, I couldn’t see her either.
“I’ll have to call someone to take a look,” Murphy muttered. “I need to drop you at Rising Moon and get Sullivan to his cage.”
“I can make it back on my own.”
“You’ll get there quicker and safer with me.” He lifted a brow. “But try not to let any more masked women lead you toward a horrific and bloody death, would you?”
Well, at least he’d seen her too. I wasn’t completely delusional.
“What do you mean, lead me?”
“She was playing you, Anne; I figured she had good reason.”