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Edward stared at me a little too long but finally said, “Let’s go.”
Everyone about-faced and started out, guns at the ready, double-checking their back track, because you never know when the monster might sneak up behind you. For the first time when following Edward in a vampire’s lair, I left my guns holstered. Deimos wasn’t in my head telling me to shoot them, but that could change, and even the fact that I could still smell blackberry pie like a promise of home couldn’t take away the fear of what Deimos would order me to do next.
49
The warehouse wasset in the center of gravel and cement as if they’d started with gravel, then cemented over it, but they hadn’t maintained it so that the parking area was a mixture of broken cement and gravel. It was a discouraging sort of place, but the sunshine felt amazing. Warmer than I remembered it, as if I’d been lost in the dark for weeks instead of only forty-eight hours.
One good thing about SWAT and the preternatural marshal service was that there were no ambulances in sight, nor the usual crowd of police of every flavor because a cop had been kidnapped. If it had been a regular police scene, everyone unconscious or covered in blood would have been forced into an ambulance and then a hospital, but in SWAT land there was no one nearby but us. They’d call up everyone else when they were sure the scene was secure. I had to stop them from calling because the scene was so not secure.
I didn’t need to worry, Edward had it under control. “We need to debrief Blake and the rest before we call anyone else to the scene.” No one argued; we were the preternatural experts and I’d worked with our SWAT enough that they believed the expert part.
“Does the woman need medical attention sooner?” Hermes asked, motioning at Rodina, still on Richard’s shoulder.
“She’s a shapeshifter,” I said. “As long as her head and heart areintact she’ll be fine.” And they took my word for it because they trusted me. I was glad it wasn’t a lie.
“Keep an eye on the exits in case we missed something,” Edward said.
They actually looked at me. “I’m not at my best, guys, so do what he says.” Again, they didn’t argue but just scattered to watch the exits. I prayed that I wouldn’t do anything that betrayed their trust.
Edward reached for my hair, pulling it aside so he could see Deimos’s big messy bite. Then he moved to the other side and exposed Rodrigo’s neater marks. “Did Jean-Claude do either of these?”
“You know he didn’t, these bites are too fresh to be three days old.”
Olaf said, “How much did the one vampire need to feed? Three of you are wearing his bites.”
“Vampires don’t bite three people in two days just to feed,” Edward said.
“He’s trying to take us away from Jean-Claude,” Richard said.
I opened my mouth to add to that, but nothing came out. Deimos was in my head saying,Say nothing. Damn it.
“Edward killed him, you are safe now,” Olaf said, but he was studying my face like he smelled a lie, or at least a half-truth.
I decided to see what Deimos would let me say out loud. “You got any holy water on you?” I asked.
“You know I do,” Edward said.
“You know what you need to do with it,” I said.
“Before dark?”
“Always.”
He looked at Richard and Ru. “What about them?”
“He needs me connected to my wolves, so he didn’t dare try to break me free the way he did to Anita,” Richard said.
“And the wereleopards,” Olaf asked.
I could taste blackberry pie again with that thick vanilla-flavored cream and that touch of cinnamon just like Nathaniel made it, and how Jean-Claude loved it. “I need them,” I said.
“Put cuffs on Rodina before she wakes,” Ru said, his voice sounding tired now.
“Is she under arrest?” Olaf asked.
“No, but I knocked her out and I’d rather have time to explain before she tries to kill anyone.”
“Why did you knock your sister out?” Edward asked.
