Page 32 of Twice Bitten
I stood, and my ass twinged. Given my vampire healing, I’d stop feeling it within an hour or so.
That didn’t make it any better. In fact, it made it worse, somehow, knowing that souvenir of the first time I’d felt truly alive in years would fade before we’d even finished dealing with Brent and Hendler.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yep.”
I headed for the door without waiting to see if he had anything else to offer. He followed me without even trying.
We found Nate, Arik, and Ian Armitage on the front porch of the pack house. Having met Ian a few times while walloping him with a pool cue and/or getting punched, I didn’t need an introduction, so I settled for a more-or-less courteous nod. Ian grinned back at me, his cheeks bright pink from the cold and clashing horribly with his rumpled red hair. I refrained from comment.
His territory, after all.
On the other hand…
“A whole pack couldn’t keep one werewolf and one human confined for a couple of hours?”
Well, so much for tact, but now that I’d committed I followed my opening salvo up with a single raised eyebrow and as much of a glare as someone wearing Ian’s mate’s ugly cast-off clothes could manage convincingly.
“The blond one had some kind of magic, I think,” Nate put in, scowling at me and shuffling a step closer to Ian. Not that he could get much closer, really, short of climbing his mate like a tree. “We had guards on the shed. Obviously. But they opened up a board in the back and got out without anyone seeing or hearing or even smelling them.”
“Why do you think it was Brent?” Jack, who’d come to stand right at my shoulder in a way I tried to find annoying but couldn’t. He’d chosen precisely the right position to convey that I was in charge but that they shouldn’t ignore him as a threat. If he’d been one of my subordinates, I’d have bought him a boatload of drinks later on the principle of encouraging good behavior. “He’s never used magic before. Except…”
I could practically hear the wheels turning in his head.
“Except possibly when he attacked your brother,” I finished for him, following his train of thought. If he’d used some kind of pre-made spell to attack Jake, that would explain a whole hell of lot, including how he’d overpowered him so apparently easily and also why Jake wouldn’t wake up from his coma. “But are you sure it was Brent?” I asked, looking at Nate.
Arik answered instead. “The gross one didn’t smell like anything but body odor and cheap booze.” Nate wrinkled his nose in disgust and nodded vigorously. I smothered a smile. Gunshots were good for something, apparently. I’d managed to avoid the task of getting up close and personal with Hendler while taking the tape off, and apparently they hadn’t. “Brent smelled like shifter magic, but he’s a werewolf, so that’s to be expected. I suppose that scent masked something else. We assumed you’d already searched him thoroughly.” Arik looked at me down his nose, raising an eyebrow of his own mockingly. “Apparently we should have done our own due diligence.”
I thought I had searched him thoroughly, but…okay, not that thoroughly. Putting a hand down his pants had far exceeded my personal boundaries.
“Okay, so he must have had some kind of spell bag,” I conceded. “My mistake. I’m the one who searched him, I’ll take the hit on that. Is whatever he’s doing still keeping them hidden?”
Nate shrugged and said, “For now. They’re still in the territory. I’d feel it if they tried to cross the wards at the boundary even with whatever magic that little asshole has in his pocket.”
I spared a glance at Ian, who’d pulled out his phone and started fiddling with it, letting his mate and Arik take point, apparently. Surprising, and kind of refreshing. Apparently not all alphas needed to talk over and walk over their mates all the time, who knew.
“Anyway, they can’t go anywhere,” Nate added.
Jack shifted a little at my side. “It sounds like they can go somewhere, only you’d know about it, which isn’t super—”
“Nope,” Nate interrupted, popping thepin an incredibly obnoxious way. Ian smiled down at his phone, looking like such an idiot. Christ, these two. They made me want to gag. “Triedto cross. Purposeful choice of words, dude.”
Nate shot a secretive, smug little look Arik’s way, and Arik smirked back at him.
“They can get to the territory boundary,” Arik said. “But we’ve made a few…” Nate started to chuckle, and Arik grinned at us in what appeared to be true joy. Malicious joy, by the glitter in those poison-green eyes. Oh, gods help us all. “Modifications,” he finished. “No one gets away until they whip it.”
And he and Nate both burst into loud, irrepressible cackles. Jack started to mutter under his breath, something about “getting to the fucking point already.”
Ian looked up at last, tucking his phone away into his pocket, and rolled his eyes. “Magical attack scorpions,” he said succinctly. And fucking confusingly.
“Say what?” Jack demanded.
Nate recovered enough to wheeze, “Magical constructs. Giant scorpions that go for anyone who’s not part of the pack. Well, anyone who’s not supposed to be crossing the border outside of the driveway, and that’s anyone who’s not part of the pack. If we have guests, we’d warn them. By the way, don’t try to sneak over the territory boundary.”
Nate shot me a shit-eating grin.
Gods, these people were nuts. But that didn’t change how much I appreciated the idea of giant magical scorpions—in the abstract.
