Page 48 of Edge of Oblivion (Night Prowler 2)
In her stiff, blood-encrusted clothes, Morgan turned back and looked at him. He gazed back at her, all muscle and bulk and green-eyed menace, the light shining raven blue off his hair.
“If I’m not mistaken, his assignment is to kill you, if you fail in your task. Why would you give him your blood?” he persisted.
Good question. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a good answer. At least, not one that made any kind of sense. She stood there for almost a minute, thinking.
“He just saved my life,” she finally answered, gesturing to the two bodies sprawled in gory proof on the terrace, the living room floor. “I owe him the chance, at least. He deserves that much from me. And...because I want him to live.” She blew out a long, exhausted breath, realizing how insane she sounded for even saying it, realizing too it was God’s honest truth. “Even if it means...”
that he’s ultimately going to have to kill me, she thought. And that I am a self-destructive moron with a death wish. But she didn’t say that. Instead she lamely ended with, “...you know.”
A nerve behind her eye throbbed, sending a spike of pain through her skull. She pressed her fingers against it, thinking this was going to be the mother of all migraines. And how was that possible, since she’d never had one before? Only humans suffered headaches. Humans and Ikati females who were about to—
“You honor us,” Mateo said, husky.
Blinking, she dropped her hand from her face and looked at him. He was gazing back at her with something like...awe.
“What?” She glanced at Tomás, whose expression had changed from one of total suspicion only seconds before to one that looked alarmingly close to gratitude.
“What you do to any one of us, you do to every one,” Tomás replied, cryptic, his mirror eyes gone curiously round.
Morgan looked back and forth between the two Ikati males and the frozen, dumfounded human doctor. “Uh...”
“It’s their code,” the doctor said with a swift glance to his companions. He pushed his glasses up farther on his nose. “The assassin’s code. Cross one, cross us all. Kill one, kill us all. Love one ...”
He cleared his throat. “Love us all. ”
“More assassins,” Morgan said, a little more feebly than she would have liked. She closed her eyes. “How many of you are there, exactly?”
“Four,” said Mateo and Tomás together.
Could have been worse. At least it wasn’t four hundred. She glanced down at Xander, back up to them. “Where’s the other one?”
It was Mateo who answered this time. “Waiting downstairs with the car.”
“The car?”
His rough voice was tinged with something like amusement. “You didn’t think we were going to fly out of here, did you?”
A girl can only hope. “Okay. Let’s get this over with,” she sighed.
“Hop to, Doc,” Mateo said to Bartleby.
The doctor leapt into a blur of action. He snatched up his black bag and remove
d a large, wicked-looking syringe and a length of plastic tubing with pointed silver cannulas at each end. He threaded the tubing through the syringe, readied a small glass bottle that smelled like alcohol, a stack of white bandages, and cotton swabs, and set all of it on the table beside Xander’s still form. He snapped on a pair of thin latex gloves.
“On the table, if you please.” He motioned with an open hand to the long dining table. Morgan sat on the edge with as much dignity as she could muster in her bloodstained clothes with her bare legs dangling over the side like a child’s. She crossed then uncrossed her legs, noting with no small trepidation that neither Mateo nor Tomás was looking at anything but her.
She felt like an ant under a very large—very male—microscope.
“You should lie down,” said Bartleby gently. He made to lift a hand to her shoulder, but a low snarl from Tomás quickly divested him of that idea. His hand dropped to his side. His face went pink.
“Would you please lie down?”
“Is it really necessary?”
“You might find yourself a bit light-headed,” he said, glancing between Mateo and Tomás.
When he spoke again his voice was apologetic. “And it’s going to sting.”
