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“I’m serious about my request.” She wasn’t going to let him sidestep this. “You’ve lived thousands of years because you’ve killed or enslaved everyone who created a risk for your longevity. Don’t change who you are and get yourself killed.”
Rather than refuse, he changed the subject again. “When I go after Morella, it won’t be with an army. It’ll be with a tight little group. In and out, unnoticed until it’s too late.”
Lauren didn’t know how she knew, but she suddenlyknewhis intentions. “No, when you go after her, you’ll go alone. In and out like a shadow, because that’s how you work. No partners. No backup. Just you.”
“I occasionally take backup, but they’re usually staged a block away.” He motioned towards the blueprints. “In this case, I’ll need a small contingent at the gate to create a distraction while I go after Morella in her inner sanctum.”
Gavin’s phone rang, and Lauren sat back while he reached for it. His brows pulled together a tiny bit when he looked at the screen, but it was enough for Lauren’s hawk to take note and tell her this was a problem. Gavin so rarely gave anything away with his face, and Lauren was concerned even before she realized it was Apollonius.
With her bear’s hearing, she could easily hear the conversation, once Gavin answered the call.
“You’ve done an acceptable job of shielding Morella and Medved’s incursion from the humans. The firecrackers were a nice touch.”
“Thank you, but I doubt you’re calling to give me an attaboy.”
“We ran into a problem in Chattanooga last year. Someone skinning shapeshifters, the bodies left so human law enforcement was involved.”
“I remember hearing about that. What’s the connection?”
“We’ve searched Morella’s financial information and properties without finding a way to prove she or her people are involved, but there are too many connections leading back to her for me to believe she isn’t involved at least peripherally. If you’re going in, I’d like to go with you.”
“Because you’ll be able to tear through her mind before I kill her, and no one will know what you’ve done?”
“Please text this number when you have a time frame in mind, and I will teleport to you so you can fill me in.”
Lauren knew this probably precluded her from being included on the trip, so she sat, accepted it, and considered the next thing she needed to talk to him about.
His call with Apollonius didn’t last much longer, and when he disconnected, she told Gavin, “Nick will be one of the last to go through the exit interview, because those he’s in charge of will need to be released first, right?”
“Do whatever you need to do in order to have a conversation with him, even if you have to abase yourself in front of the other shifters to get his attention.”
“Were you in my head again?” Because she’d already assumed she was going to have to make some kind of public statement, a way to show she respected his position, before she’d get him to talk to her. She knew her cat well enough to know what it would take to break through his hurt feelings.
“No, but I appreciate you checking in with me. You understand I’ve been trying to make sure my people see you as strong and worthy of standing at my side, but I also understand that Nick is your friend of old, and it hurts you, not having him in your life. I trust your judgement and feel certain you’ll find a balance.”
“I’m sorry I let Basil take me down. In the future, I’ll probably situate myself farther back from the front of the stage. I’m also going to want to practice some, with a vampire coming at me so I can try to build up my reflexes a little more.”
“No daywalker I’m aware of can get out of the way of a vampire at full speed within thirty yards, but I will set some practice up as you’ve requested because I’ve learned never to underestimate you. You owe me no apologies, Lauren.”
“One quick thing, just so you don’t think I’m keeping things from you. Mordecai is working with me to help me incorporate all my new senses into one fabric. Aaron worked with me most recently, and he did something to my brain.” She shrugged, unwilling to tell him just how badly Aaron had hurt her, but needing him to understand. “It’s like he roto-rootered every pathway in my head to make them bigger? It hurt like fuck, like electricity creating new wiring in my brain. Not just electricity, because that’s physical, but the metaphysical counterpart as well?”
Gavin’s micro-expressions told her he was concerned but trying not to let it show, but he only asked, “Is your mother aware?”
“I’ll talk to her about it eventually, but I haven’t yet. I completely trust Aaron, and I mostly trust Mordecai. I’d probably talk to mom if it was just Mordecai doing it, but Uncle Aaron treated me as one of his even before he had kids, and it’s like his feelings for me grew once he became a dad. You’d think he’d discover the love of a father to his babies meant he didn’t love his friend’s kid as much, but the opposite seems to have happened, and he seems to love me even more. Whatever he’s doing, it’s to make me stronger, not weaker.”
That seemed to assuage her vampire’s worry. No stress lines when he asked, “Has it helped?”
“Yes. My capacity for incorporating multiple sensory inputs has grown, as well as my ability to discern the difference in scents. I can hear, smell, and see at the same time now. I mean, I can take it all in and use it now. At first, I had to focus on one sense at a time — my sight, the hawk’s, and the bear’s, woven into one fabric. Then what I was hearing and what the bear was hearing, woven into another. And the scent was hardest, because it was the bear and hawk completely drowning out what the human can scent.” She touched her head, remembering the pain of those sessions, and then deliberately put it down. “Whatever Aaron and Mordecai have done, rewiring my brain, I can take everything in at the same time and make sense of it. My Shifù in China helped me take everything in as instinct in a fight, but I wasn’t able to do it outside of the kind of focus needed while engaged. Aaron and Mordecai are helping me do that.”
She shrugged, “It isn’t anything pressing, it just felt like I should talk to you about it. There’s nothing to be done, you just needed to know. We agreed not to keep secrets from each other unless we have to, and I haven’t had a chance to bring it up. Now I have. Go do your exit interviews, and I’m going to find Nick and see if I can get him to talk to me.”
“I’m glad you told me. When all of this dies down, we need some time with just the two of us and a few bottles of wine.”
Lauren smiled. “Yeah, I look forward to that.” She poked him in the chest. “Make sure you stay alive so we can do it.”
Chapter 24
Nick was exhausted. He’dchangedfor a few moments, and that’d resolved most of the silver poisoning, but he wasn’t going to be back to a hundred percent without another shift to lion and back, possibly two or three of them, along with a whole lot of food and twelve to fifteen hours of sleep.
