Dom took a drink and shook his head. “No. Didn’t see the need. Our intel hasn’t confirmed the usage of silver-tipped bullets by any Northwest cells yet. These boys are pretty unsophisticated up here. Didn’t know they had them.”
“Yet?” Lily’s look was withering. “Are you all pigheaded idiots? It was just a matter of time. All the DBs in the South are using them—you know that. Didn’t you get the Agency directive instructing all agents to wear protection when out on patrol?”
“Yes. And your point is...?”
“My point is that you could’ve been killed, or worse. Some body parts don’t regenerate as completely as others. Didn’t you hear about Eddie Bale in Costa Rica? Almost got his head shot off with a silvie and they’ve had a heck of a time with the skingrafts. Even after they flew him to that burn center in New York.”
“I hate those damn vests. Besides, a vest wouldn’t have helped Eddie anyway. Next thing you know, the Agency’s going to make us wear helmets. What we do is dangerous. If that bothered me in the slightest, I’d have chosen another line of work. Like owning a bar.”
A loud ruckus broke out near the pool tables as a couple of cops cuffed an old guy with a long, thinning comb-over and hauled him through the crowd. When he refused to walk, they grabbed him by each arm and dragged him outside to a waiting patrol car. Dom turned his attention back to Lily.
“Three days ago you were shot with a silvie?” She pursed her lips, obviously contemplating what he had said. “Impossible. You’d still be flat on your ass.”
“That’s why I called you here. A couple of DBs came after me, but I managed to dodge them early in the morning and bury myself in the woods. Then a sweetblood found me. And you don’t have to guess to know what happened next.”
Lily whistled. “Shit, Dom. Did you drain him? Her? That explains the speedy recovery. And your fabulous smell.” She grabbed his arm and pressed her nose to the inside of his wrist. “Her, right?”
He pointedly ignored her question and withdrew his hand. “I need your help. Foss and I covered up the scent trail, but in order to wrap up the assignment, I wanted to see if you could detect any lingering traces. To make sure the Darkbloods can’t track the scent back.”
She played with her straw and scowled into her glass. When she met his gaze, his gut clenched. He really didn’t want to explain it to her when he didn’t understand it himself. Besides, the whole experience seemed too personal, too intimate to discuss. He wasn’t like Jackson, or Lily, for that matter, wholoved recounting their exploits to anyone with a set of ears. Not his style. Or at least it wasn’t now.
“Seems like a bit of an overkill, don’t you think? I’m sure you and Jackson covered the trail well enough.” Her hawkish eyes appraised him. He wasn’t going to get anything past her.
“I just want to be sure.” Leaning hack in his seat, he forced himself to tap his fingers to the music, pretending to be focused on the band. He could almost hear the cogs in Lily’s head turning.
No goddamn questions. Just take the assignment.
“It’s a woman, eh?” She reached over and put her hand on his wrist. She was too perceptive. Or maybe he was just a poor actor. He attempted to keep his face expressionless, hard. “And you have feelings for her. I’m right, aren’t I?”
He didn’t know what he was feeling. “It’s a woman.” He tried to sound emotionless.
“What’s going on? Talk. I can tell something’s up. I know you too well.”
For chrissake. Running a hand through his hair, he took a deep breath and resigned himself to the inevitable Oprah-likescrutiny. Feelings and talking and shit.
“The strangest thing happened. I almost drained her, so I had to do a blood transfer.” She sat up straight and her eyes widened. “Spare me the lecture, Lil. Santiago knows about it and is probably going to report it to the Council. The bigger problem is now she and I have this weird connection, some kind of strange bond, yet we’ve never talked. She’s never seen me, or at least she doesn’t remember seeing me. I wiped her memory.”
As he recounted the incident at Mackenzie’s house, Lily listened with her head bowed, nodding at times, and picked at her red-tipped nails. He braced himself for twenty questions, but she remained silent.
“Have you ever heard of such bullshit? I had some unusual sensations with just her blood in my system. But now that she’s had a little of mine, it’s even more heightened. I even heard her dreams when she slept. I thought the old stories were a bunch of superstitious nonsense.”
“Enlazado por la Sangre.”Lily dropped her voice so low he could barely hear even though the band was now playing a slow ballad.
Her subdued reaction surprised him. “What?”
“Bonded by blood. My grandparents shared a blood bond, have I never told you that?”
Dom shook his head. Never heard of it.
“Hardly anyone outside the family knew. In fact, not many inside the family did, either. I’m the only grandchild my grandmother told.”
“I don’t believe it. You? Keeping secrets?”
“Yeah, well, she ended up staking herself. So we don’t talk about it much.”
“God, Lil, I’m sorry.”
“No problem. You didn’t know.” Lily took another sip of beer from her straw. “She described the bond as a joining of body, soul and spirit. They knew each other’s thoughts. Could sense each other’s energy and emotions. Kind of like tuning into a private radio signal of someone’s life force.Pranais what she called it. Not only did they share blood, but they also shared energies and could absorb it from each other just by touching. They thrived off it.”
