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Lifting one eyebrow at him, I looked around the red splattered room. “And you’re going to clean up this mess before anyone walks into the staff lounge?”
I had a hundred spells to dispel this amount of blood, but I couldn’t tell them. Besides, I was curious. An angel and a half fae, half incubus man who came from an ‘outside interest’? I’d assumed enforcers from the Next Life Company, which was the Earth-facing branch of the Angelic Enforcement Agency, but the side of the company I knew about upheld justice. They didn’t dispose of people in private, secretive corners without a five-step incident report attached. Then again, they’d mentioned being with an outside interest. Maybe it was a clandestine branch of the Company? Conspiracy theorists had been harping for years about how the Company often took matters into it’s own hands even when it wasn’t technically legal.
“Don’t you worry about that, sweetness,” Caspian said, draping an arm over my shoulders and moving me out of the washroom. My heels left a trail of foul-smelling blood in my wake and I took them off, tossing them back into the room with Shan.
“If you want to see those again, I’d take them with you.”
“I’ll never be able to wash the blood out.”
Again, there was a spell that would do it. They didn’t know I knew one, though. And one thing I’d always found difficult to get rid of was scents. Sure, I’d hidden mine for six years, but with a hint of rot and copper this scent would clog up my nose every time I so much as looked at the shoes. It might be more the memory coming back than anything else.
Leading me out of the lounge, Caspian and I kept our heads down as we pushed through the crowd back to the bar. Oswald would be around somewhere, keeping a lookout for more of Kylan’s henchmen. No one noticed or cared about the blood until we stepped up to Loretta. The DJ’s bumping set drowned out her gasp of shock. “Can you pass me my bag?” I shouted, pointing below the opposite counter.
She grabbed the purse, leaning forward to yell in my ear. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Those vamps got a little rowdy, followed me to the staff room. It got messy when they were immobilizing them. Don’t worry, they’re back in Zemterra now, but I can’t serve drinks smelling like a corpse.”
“You don’t smell that bad.” Her nose crinkled in confusion and I had to remind myself she wouldn’t catch it the way I did. Omegas had stronger scent glands and instincts attached to how people smelled.
“I’m covered in blood from the fight, Lor. I’ll make it up to you, promise. When I’m outside, I’ll call Mattie to come down and help at the bar if you need him.”
My purse in my hands, I waved goodbye, stepping into the crush of bodies again. People were trailing out of the club by this hour, slowly but surely. Heading home so they could fuck or sleep or drink themselves into a stupor without the threat of our bouncers calling the AEA. I went out the front door, not realizing I was being followed until Caspian reached out a hand to grab my shoulder and stop me from crossing the street. “Where are you going?”
“Home?”
“Perfect, lead the way.”
“Oh, no, you’re not coming.”
Hand trailing down my shoulder to lace his fingers with mine, Caspian grinned. Underneath the happiness, there was a layer of something else. Fear, possibly. Worry? “You think I’m going to let you walk home by yourself after you were almost killed, or worse, by two vampires?”
“That’s exactly what you’re going to do.”
“No way.”
Gritting my teeth, I jerked my hand away from his. Breaking contact caused me near physical pain, but this overprotective act was a stark reminder of why I couldn’t get attached. If they came to my house, they would find my heat room. It reeked of me. I didn’t need the protection, anyway. The only reason I wasn’t able to get myself out of the situation in the washroom was because I couldn’t kill my attackers. And because their arrival had stopped me from carrying a weapon on me. “You have a weapon on you?”
Surprised, he nodded.
One foot stepped forward, so we were chest to chest. I watched his breathing hitch, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. Hands starting mid-torso, I groped every inch of him until I found something hard. Not the hard rod I truly wanted, but the one I needed at the moment.
When I stepped back from him, I had a long dagger in my hand. In one movement, I unsheathed the blade, wielding it between us. “See? I’ll be fine.”
Before he recovered from his shock, I turned around and darted across the street. I was in an alley opening a portal home before he could catch up to me.
Chapter 10
Shan
“Iunderstand,sir.Thankyou for your leeway on this,” I said.
It was a good thing I was on a phone call and not a video call, because it wouldn’t do to have Director Knoxwell see the rage on my face. The way I was holding tension in my shoulders. My impassive mask had been shaken out of place and it was all because of her.
Freya Alverona.
An altogether ordinary woman, by every account. Or at least, she seemed that way on paper. As soon as I’d met her, I’d known she was anything but ordinary. And that she was going to be trouble. Especially for me, considering our past life history she knew nothing about.
“It’s not like you to kill outside of your mission objectives,” Knoxwell said, probing.
