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Ozzy slipped past the chaos and climbed into my lap, purring and rubbing himself all over me. I breathed in a deep breath of his scent, glad the notes of an ocean breeze were overpowering the rotting stench of the vampires who’d attacked me. As my familiar, his touch had the added benefit of infusing me with magic, enough that I started mumbling healing spells under my breath.“Are you good?”he asked me, licking my cheek with his sandpaper tongue.
I nodded before focusing my attention on the vampires again.
“They followed me in here,” I explained, like it wasn’t obvious. “When they were at the bar, they gave me the creeps, but I didn’t think they’d go this far.”
That was only a half lie. I’d had my suspicions they were here to kidnap me for Kylan. Being inside the building had been a safety net, though. My guard had been down. A near fatal mistake on my part.
Shan was simmering, rage barely under the surface. The vampire Caspian held was turning steadily bluer, his heart rate slowing. I assumed the angel enforcer was going to send both men straight back to hell.
My assumption was wrong.
Shan pulled a long, thin knife out of nowhere and shoved the blade straight through the vampire’s heart, twisting as he screamed at the top of his lungs. When he pulled out the knife, it was only so he could cleave the man’s head clean off, his body dropping to the floor as blood drenched everything in the vicinity, his scream abruptly cut off. Seconds later, Caspian’s captive fell to the floor, ice coating his body and forcing his face to hold an expression of shock. Not that there was much of a chance to commit that to memory, because the second his head hit the linoleum, it shattered along with the rest of his body.
Gaping at the two men, I looked down at my blood drenched fingers, bright red sliding through Ozzy’s orange coat. He was stiff, as shocked as I was.
This wasn’t what angel enforcers were supposed to do. They didn’t kill people.
Beneath the shock, though, I couldn’t deny violence turned me the fuck on. They’d killed for me, something no one else had ever done. No one except Oswald. And my perception of murder had been warped years ago. I was fucked in the head. Maybe they were too?
“Well, that’s one way to deal with the problem,” I said.
Pulling Ozzy into my arms, I tried to stand, struggling to keep my feet under me until Caspian stepped over and grabbed me under the arms. My legs were weak. The magic use and near loss of consciousness had taken a toll. I never would have been this weak after using magic three years ago, back before my body turned against me for denying it an Alpha. Cas didn’t move away from me, his warmth pressed to my back. If I didn’t know how terrible these two were for me, I would drag them out into the lounge for a proper thanking.
“Are you injured?” Cas whispered in my ear, brushing a red-tinted piece of hair away from my cheek.
My hair was going to be orange when I washed the blood out. An easy fix for a spell once I’d finished healing myself. Part of me didn’t want to eliminate the reminder. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“So you are injured, then?” Shan asked, stepping up to grab my chin.
Sandwiched between the two men, with Ozzy draped into my arms, my arousal built. The two disassembled bodies did nothing to dissuade my Omega nature from reacting to pure Alpha presence. It was a good thing they couldn’t scent my nature. Unfortunately, they could still scent that I was aroused. Shan’s expression changed the moment he realized, his eyebrows scrunching together.
When his confusion smoothed over again, his grip on my chin went softer. Fingers trailed along my jaw and down my neck, tracing gently over the bruising. The marks were fading as fast as they appeared. Being this close to Shan and Cas was giving me magical energy, too. I tried not to think about how I was essentially feeding off them. They wouldn’t even notice it was missing — I was only picking up the infinitely small amounts they emitted when their Alpha instincts went into overdrive.
“I won’t be in twenty minutes,” I said.
Side stepping out from between them, I placed Oswald down on the counter beside the sink. I was a gods damned mess, covered in blood. My glasses were lopsided on my face. One arm had broken in the scuffle. A muttered spell put it to rights again.“These guys are going to have questions,”Ozzy said, perching on the counter and glaring.
“I don’t have answers. That vamp nearly choked me to unconsciousness. I can’t come up with lies right now. Think we can hold them off?”
He brought his paw up to lick it, cleaning off the drying blood. Caspian and Shan were watching us both. I saw them in the mirror, but I ignored them. “That’s disgusting,” I said to Ozzy.
Chuffing, he continued. Even started purring, letting us all know how much he enjoyed drinking blood. Familiars weren’t known to feast on flesh or blood, but we’d determined he wasn’t your typical familiar. I was half expecting him to jump down onto the ground and start lapping at the wide puddles covering the floor, which would be even more disgusting. Especially since this was a washroom.
“I’m sure we can give you a proper bath, little pussycat,” Caspian said.
Ozzy hissed, swiping at the incubus with his claws when he got close. “I don’t think he likes your idea,” Shan said dryly.
“Oh, come on, I’ve always wanted to give a cat a bath. Is he seriously going to lick all the gross old blood off his fur?”
“If you give him a cat bath, I can guarantee that he’ll kill you in your sleep,” I said. “You won’t see it coming.”
Turning back around, I hoped they wouldn’t ask questions. My familiar had gotten the conversation off of what had happened without me realizing until after the fact. Maybe the change of topic had slipped past the two enforcers as well. Or were they investigators? It occurred to me I had no idea what they were. Or why they were here, except for the fact that it had something to do with the Alpha murderer.
Also known as me.
“We should clean this up. Are you going to tell Mattie what happened here?” I asked.
“I would appreciate if you mentioned nothing about the deaths to him,” Shan said. “Tell him the two vamps were bothering you back here, but I sent them back to Zemterra for their sins.”
