Page 137 of Forget Me Not

That struck Ray as funny.

He smiled, although to a human it might not look friendly. To this human it didn’t.

“You can’t…” The human floundered. “You can’t kill me. You’re a—” The foolishness of what he’d been about to say seemed to hit him. “Nothing about you says you would.Fuck. They said this was the best there is. Kill him! That’s what you should be doing. How the fuck did you dodge this?”

“I didn’t.” The words were animal sounds pushed out between sharp teeth. Horrifying, to those who had gathered. Ray didn’t care much about that at the moment, either. “I’ve been fighting it.” And would have, until all his strength would have left him.

“But he’s just a fairy—part fairy.” The human tripped over a manhole cover, landed hard on his back. He stared up at Ray. He had hazel eyes. In the streetlights and lighting from the mural, Ray could see his face, his hair. Ray hadn’t noticed them in Guerrero’s. A nondescript white human man with brown hair and hazel eyes. Nothing about him stood out. It probably made him perfect for the sorts of things he was hired to do.

The man put his hands up again as if trying to ward Ray off, then crawled backward until he bumped into the curb. He used it to push himself to his feet.

Someone gasped, more than one someone.

The human attempted to bargain. “Listen, if he matters that much, we won’t make you kill your mate.”

“I don’t have a mate.” Ray kept after him, slow and careful. “Tell me who hired you.”

“What do you mean you don’t—oh shit.” The human turned to look at the bystanders as he finally understood. “Help me! He’s a were and he’s gone crazy! Call the cops!”

Ray had no idea if anyone would but showed his fangs again. He was a were who had just lost his mate. Threats were meaningless.

Maybe on some level the human knew that. Maybe he’d been the one to do cursory research on things he didn’t understand. He pointed at Ray the way TV witches did when casting spells. “Youwillkill your mate! Youwillkill Callalily Parker!”

“Callalily Parker is not my mate,” Ray told him in a voice like gravel. He stepped forward, one last step, and said it again. “Callalily Parker is not my mate.”

Then he reached for a handful of the human’s suit and picked him up off the ground.

The human wrapped both hands around Ray’s arm but wasn’t strong enough to do more than hang on. “Did you hear me? I said to kill your mate. I command you to kill your mate!”

“Wrong words,” Ray informed him, mean and sharp, tired and in an agony that had nothing to do with bullets. He was bleeding instead of healing. “I don’t have a mate. You don’t… you don’t understand. To you, I’m an animal, no matter what clothes I wear or how I drink my coffee.” Perplexed, frightened hazel eyes met his. Ray was sotired. He could feel the strength of the spell now, the weight of it. “I’d rather never have known him than hurt him. I haven’t even hurt you the way you should be hurt. That isn’t what I do.”

Ray looked into a blank human face, because this was an uncaring human in the service of uncaring people. “I will die…” Ray took a breath. “I would die from Rejection rather than hurt him, or any of the others who might have gotten in my way. But you didn’t bother to discover that. You decided to kill him, and me in the process. You took him from me. You…” Ray raised his voice, anger rising with it. “You took him from me.”

“Help me!” the human croaked, glancing left and right.

Ray looked too, frowning at the people blocking most of his view of the fountain, a large outline that had to be a troll over by the mural, and then, out in the street, several police cars, lights flashing but sirens quiet.

There were officers standing by the cars, watching yet staying back. The betrayal of that would hurt, if Ray were capable of feeling more pain. Unless the non-interference was a gift. He wasn’t sure which, and tossed his head, but there was too much going on for his thoughts to clear.

If they were staying back for his sake, he hoped the ones who might be thinking of him would take what was left of their kindness and leave the job while they still had it. But he also thought that theyshouldstop him. If their job was to protect, then they should stop him. Without bullets or tasers. They should have done it like Penn had once talked a depressed demon off a ledge, or how an unarmed, ancient, fragile human had calmed down a frightened werewolf.

He called out to them anyway in a weary roar. “Detective Del Mar is in that building surrounded by the fence and needs medical assistance!” A few of them twitched and looked to the others, as if not sure what to do. Ray turned his back on them to find them the troll. “Please. She needs help. There’s an injured human as well.”

The troll set her shoulders, then started to walk down the street, glancing back at Ray a few times as she went.

Not even a collapsing building could stop a troll for long. Ray could breathe again.

He looked at the human dangling above the sidewalk, the one grasping his arm, and frowned as he let him go.

The man hit the ground hard, then toppled onto his ass as though his legs were jelly.

“I don’t have a mate.” Ray rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand and blinked several times because he suddenly didn’t hurt and he didn’t think that was a good sign. But he also didn’t know what to do about it.

He focused again on the human, who was frozen staring up at Ray.

“I don’t have a mate. You took that from me for the sake of some buildings? Formoney?” Ray gestured to the crowd with the arm that hadn’t gone stiff and hot. “This is their home, and you work to destroy it, and then try to makemethe monster? And you let them do this?” He challenged the officers standing around, standing there when they were supposed to serve. “You do nothing unless these people fight for themselves? Why haven’t you tried to kill me now? Am I not out of control enough for you?” He snarled for show, then exhaled heavily.

All of the village had been at the block party. Half of them seemed to be here now, watching Ray bleed.

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