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“Oh, believeme, I know that,” West said with a glint in his eyes. Before I could decide whether it was teasing or hostile, another thought struckme.
“Couldwe take the battle to the vampires?” I asked. “They’re totally vulnerable during the day, right? If we found their hideoutsand—”
Marco, who’d stayed near us, started shaking his head. “One compliment I’ll willingly give the bloodsuckers—they’re nothing if not painstaking when it comes to being careful with their daytime routines. They’ll be behind about twenty locked doors in some deep dark basement—dozens of deep dark basements, all across those cities. And we don’t even know which basements. I suppose if we burned the entire city to theground…”
I exhaled sharply. “I get it. No luck there. Maybe we need to find ourselves some secret basements to hide out intoo.”
“If things get desperate, I get the impression your friend might have some ideas on that score,” Marco said, lookingamused.
Yeah, Kylie probably knew at least a handful of abandoned buildings we could hole up in for a while. But that would only help us until the vampires found us again. We needed to convince them it was too much trouble trying to exterminate us—or we needed to exterminate them while theytried.
The gate squeaked open again. Felix came in, holding up a young man so wobbly and bloody it looked like he’d have fallen over without the help. My heart leapt into mythroat.
Marco’s eyes widened. “Timothy,” he said, stridingover.
The injured shifter gave the feline alpha a hazylook.
“He just stumbled over to where we were working,” Felix said. “He hasn’t said anything. I’m not sure he evencan.”
“Get him inside,” West said. “Quickly. He needs rest and someone to look at thosewounds.”
Marco took Timothy’s other arm. He and Felix led the poor guy into the estate house together. I hurried after them, my heart thudding. Had the vampires made another attack? Just now, in the middle of the day? That shouldn’t even bepossible.
Timothy’s feet started to drag on the floor. Marco flinched at the sound and hefted him higher. “We’ve got you. Just a littlefarther.”
“Over here,” West said, opening a door just down the hall from the great room. An office, from the looks of it, with two walls of built-in bookshelves, a desk, an armchair—and a sofa, where Marco and Felix laid the feline shifterdown.
Timothy shuddered and coughed. “Water!” Marco snapped. Felix went running. The jaguar shifter knelt beside his fallenkin.
Timothy hadn’t been shot—or at least, if he had, those weren’t the wounds currently bleeding. A deep gouge across the side of his ribs was slowly shrinking. A large chunk of hair had been scraped off his scalp. I cringed inside as I noted each injury. What had happened tohim?
He obviously couldn’t tell usyet.
“I can call one of my kin to—” Westbegan.
Marco cut him off with a jerk of his hand. “I’ll do it. He’s myresponsibility.”
He flicked a jaguar claw from one index finger and dug it into the flesh of his wrist. I winced outright at the sudden stream of blood. Jaw clenched, Marco let some trickle over Timothy’s side and then his head, combining the healing power of his healthy body with his underling’s best efforts. Then he pressed his opposite palm to his wrist to encourage his own cut toheal.
Timothy murmured, his limbs relaxing into the couch. His eyelids fluttered. Felix reappeared clutching a glass of water. “Thank you,” Marco said, accepting it. He returned to his kin and held the glass to Timothy’slips.
The feline shifter managed a couple of swallows. He exhaled a relieved breath. Marco turned to set the glass on the side table, and Timothy’s hand shot out to grasp the front of his alpha’sshirt.
“Alpha,” herasped.
“Hey,” Marco said, putting his hand over Timothy’s. “You need to recover. It’s a miracle you managed to escape them at all.” He glanced up at me. “He’s one of the missing four from my New Yorkhouse.”
He shouldn’t know much more than Leonard and Sandra had, then. But Timothy yanked on Marco’s shirt again. “No,” he said. “Didn’t escape. They sent me. I’m amessage.”
Beside me, West stiffened. Marco’s gaze sharpened. “What’s the message,Timothy?”
“Tonight,” the injured shifter choked out. “The king will parlay with you tonight, at full-dark, by the Marveillecrossroads.”
Chapter 3
Nate
I roundeda corner in the canine estate’s halls a little too quickly and bumped shoulders with one of West’s kin. The jackal shifter took one look at my face and cowered backward. His chin twitched upward with that instinctive reaction all the canines had to show their throats when avoiding a fight. “My apologies, alpha. I promise to be morecareful.”
