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“Yes, my vampire friend, I am no stranger to battle.”
Remembering why I was there, I leaned down and petted Delilah awake. “Yo, Kitten. Wake up. I need to talk to you downstairs.”
The cat languorously stretched, looking total y in bliss. Then she shimmered and began to transform. I stepped back as Shade slipped from under the covers and pul ed on his robe. Within a couple of minutes, Delilah appeared on the bed, Hel o Kitty PJs and al . So that was why her col ar had been pink instead of blue.
“Come on, Kitten. Down to the kitchen and I’l fil you in on al that’s happened since you went to bed. I’ve had a busy night.”
She padded over to Shade and slid into his arms. He encircled her waist gently—she was stil having some pain from the broken ribs Stacia Bonecrusher had given her a month ago—and his lips touched hers. A spark flared between them, and I watched as they kissed, deep and long, soulful, bound together by an invisible connection. Delilah had never had that with anybody—and I was grateful that now she did.
After a moment, I cleared my throat. “I’l send her back up in a few minutes. You just park yourself, dude.”
Shade laughed again and winked at me. “Mistress Menol y, you are a harsh and cruel woman to take my Delilah from me, but I wil be good and wait.”
As he slid back into bed, Delilah and I headed down the stairs.
“You’ve got a good man there. He reeks of loyalty.” I said it playful y but meant every word. He was entranced by my sister, and though he was always polite to both Camil e and me, it was obvious he had placed his heart in our sister’s hands.
“He’s . . . easy. Easy to be with. Easy to talk to. Easy to lean on when I’m feeling nervous. We laugh together, a lot. I feel safe around him—I don’t have to think about it. We can just be. I’ve never known anything like this. I think . . .”
She paused, then shrugged. “I think this is truly what love is. With Chase, it was like being a teenager. I needed to test out what love meant to me, to try on the feeling for practice. But something was missing. Something I don’t think I ever would have found with him. I love Chase, but I don’t think I was ever in love with him.”
“How’s Zachary taking it?” We didn’t bring up the werepuma much. Both Delilah and Chase stil felt guilty over Zach’s injuries, from when he’d saved Chase’s life and taken a nasty blow that had left him paralyzed. At first they thought it would be temporary, but now he’d been moved to a rehab center and the doctors were thinking he would be in a wheelchair forever.
“He stil won’t talk to me. Nerissa told me he’s taken to spending more and more time in puma form. Something changes when he shifts over and he’s free from the pain and able to move again.
The healers don’t know what the difference is, but in puma form—he’s free.”
I heard something in her voice. “You think he’s going to permanently choose to . . . ?”
A tear trickled down her face and she nodded. “I think, yes, one day Zach wil change into puma form and run off and we’l never see him again. I think he’l go into the mountains, live as a lone male. And how can I say he’s wrong? In puma form, he can run and hunt and move . . . but in human form, he’s seen as a weak member of his Pride. The Rainier Puma Pride is harsh, in many ways, and he’s been relegated to a position of lesser status since the accident.”
“Why? Just because of his injuries?”
She shook her head, the tips of her fangs poking out. Delilah’s fangs were nonretractable. “No,”
she said, anger washing across her face. “If he’d been protecting the Pride, he’d be considered a hero. No, it’s because he was protecting Chase and me. Me, especial y. You know how the Rainier Puma Pride feels about us, even though we helped them defeat Kyoka and the werespiders.”
“I know. I don’t talk about it much, but Nerissa gets flak from her Pride-mates because of her relationship with me. I’ve had it up to here with the Puma Pride and to be honest, I hope that she leaves them.”
Delilah gave me a thoughtful nod. “They aren’t as set in their ways as some werewolf packs, but they can be terribly cruel in their assessment of outsiders.”
Placing a hand on her shoulder as we entered the kitchen, I whispered, “What wil be, wil be.
Let thoughts of Zach go for now, Kitten. There’s nothing you can do.”
Camil e and Iris were waiting at the table with tea in hand and cookies on a plate. As I sat down, I suddenly realized that this was our pattern. The three of us, with Iris, strategizing in the middle of the night. It had become so routine it was almost comforting. With a soft smile, I sat back and began to lay out everything that had happened since they went to bed.
CHAPTER 7
“Good gods, how can you get in so much trouble in one night?” Camil e stared at me, her mouth open. “We leave you alone to get some sleep and you end up involved with Blood Wyne’s son?”
“Son implies youth, and Roman, while he doesn’t look a day over thirty-five, isn’t youthful by any stretch of the imagination.” I glanced around. The kitchen was almost back together after the demons invaded our home, but there were stil deep gouges in a few of the wal s and the tile needed to be replaced. The guys had pul ed together, and in one month they had cleared out al the debris and repaired a good deal of the damage. New appliances gleamed in the dim light.
“What do you need us to do?” Delilah asked.
“Can you run down as much information on the Greenbelt Park District as you can find—
especial y regarding ghosts and haunting? And anything you might happen to hear about vampiric activity there.”
