Bitten 2 (21 page)

“Happy now?” she asked around a mouthful of bread and deli meat.

“
Oui
,” he replied with a smile before depositing a kiss on the top of her head. “Please, have a seat
Mademoiselle
Cray,” he added, gesturing to one of the other empty seats at the table.

Silence descended on the table when Jean took his own seat, and, despite his insistence that Quick and I partake of the food he had spread out on the table, seemed content to limit himself to slow sips of dark red wine. It was the first sign I’d seen that spoke of his own sadness at having lost his vampire companion. Picking at my own plate of pasta salad and apple slices, I found my appetite lacking, although it had been hours since my last meal. Still, I didn’t want to offend Jean, and politely nibbled at my food while trying to ignore the leaden feel of it in the pit of my stomach.

I almost sighed aloud in relief when a phone began to ring in one of the other rooms, and I took the interruption as an excuse to push my plate aside. Quick appeared equally glad of the distraction as she pushed her chair back from the table.

“I should get that. It might be the realtor,” she said before leaving the room.

“She was so bright, like a speck of starlight in the dark,” Jean said after a while, his voice so soft I almost didn’t catch his words.

“Sorry?”

“Before all this ugliness,” he said, gazing at his half empty glass where it sat on the table. “Leanne. She was full of life and happiness. I fear that Suresh’s death has stolen that light away.”

“I’m sure she will recover in time, become her normal self again.”

“
Oui
. I am sure you are right,” he said, lifting his gaze to meet mine and gracing me with a sad smile. There was a deep wealth of sadness in his pale grey eyes, and for a moment, I was almost overwhelmed by the sudden desire to embrace him, wanting to ease his grief.

Attributing my sudden tenderheartedness to my own experiences with loss, I groped for something, anything, to lessen the air of sadness that had suffused the kitchen. “Have you known each other long?”

“
Oui
, Gabrielle and I met Suresh in Paris many years ago. When he heard that we had settled ‘ere he came to visit several years ago. He met Leanne during his stay and decided to remain a while. The rest, as they say,
c’est
l'histoire
.”

“And Gabrielle, she was your...”

“Great, great, great, great
grand-mère
. She was turned when her own daughter was a young woman. A member of each generation has been her Day Servant ever since, but I never imagined I would be the last. I confess, I am at a loss as to what I shall do with my life now. I was raised with only one purpose in life, to care for and protect Gabrielle. Now that she is gone, I fear my life has no purpose.”

Jean’s confession was like a stab to the heart and I felt tears gather in my eyes as I reached across the table to lay my hand over his. I didn’t know him, and doubted I would ever see him again after this meeting, but I couldn’t bear to see the pain etched so deeply in the lines of his face.

Feeling the need to fill the silence with something, but unwilling to spout trite words of comfort, I said the only thing I could think of. “I know it’s nowhere near enough, but I’m sorry anyway.”

Laying his over hand over mine, surrounding my fingers with his, he offered up a weak, but genuine, smile. “Thank you. It is kind of you to say.”

A moment later, Quick’s approaching footsteps broke the spell of our connection, and slipping his hand from mine, Jean rose to meet his friend in the doorway where he curled both of her hands in his. “Is everything well,
ma chère?
”

“Yes, everything’s fine. The realtor just wanted to let me know that she will be dropping off the last of the paperwork tomorrow.”

“
C’est bon
. Now, come back and sit down. I believe
Mademoiselle
Cray has some more questions for us. ”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CLIMBING BEHIND THE wheel of the SUV, I fought against the urge to pound my fist into the steering wheel. Jean and Quick had given me about as much insight into who had killed their vamps as Whitlow had, which is to say none at all. If the killer’s previous timeline was anything to go by, it wouldn’t be long before he struck again, and I was no closer to figuring who it was or why they was doing it than I had been when I started.

I was pondering just how little I had discovered about the murders when my cell phone rang, startling me out of my thoughts. Seeing Juliet’s name flashing on the screen when I pulled the annoyance from my pocket, I felt a rush of hopeful excitement. Maybe she had come across something that would point to who was behind the attacks.

A girl can dream, right?

My excitement was quickly crushed, however.

“Are you joining us for the run tonight?” she asked, the excitement in her voice palpable.

As much as I wanted to turn her down, my burgeoning fondness for her had me asking, “Who’s ‘us’?”

“Just me, Hank, and a couple others,” she said, and when I continued to hem and haw added, “It’s all very casual. No cultish overtones, I swear.”

Regardless of my reservations, I had to chuckle at that. Still, one major factor remained.

“Will Metembe be there?” I asked. I was leery about going wolf around a bunch of strangers, but even that didn’t compare with my desire to avoid any run-ins with the big, surly were. He’d made it all too clear that he wasn’t my biggest fan, and the feeling was quite mutual.

“No, he’s got something else going on tonight.”

Thank God for small mercies.

“Come on, Riley. It’ll be fun,” she needled, and I could all too easily envision her on the other end of the line bouncing up and down on her toes in hopeful excitement, à la overexcited cheerleader.

The image of Juliet decked out in a cheerleader outfit, complete with pom-poms, flittered through my mind, bringing back a slew of unpleasant memories from my own days in high school. For reasons I can’t fathom, I had a momentary lapse of sanity and found myself giving in to her pleas.

It
has
been a few days since I was able to go for a run,
I reasoned with myself, even as I wondered if I’d just made a huge mistake.

“Alright. Where should I meet you?”

* * *

Southwest of Denver, tucked between Highway 285 and C-470, Deer Creek Canyon Park was a local favorite in the summer months, with hikers and families alike descending on the area for an afternoon away from the noise of the city. But in the winter when the snow still glittered on the ground, it was silent and deserted. Only the wind and snow, and a few crazy werewolves, frequented the park at that time of year.

Pulling into the gravel lot at the trailhead I sat in the car for a long while, listening to the cooling engine ping and sigh while I wondered what the hell I was doing here. I’d shifted around other weres when the therapist I was seeing after being turned had insisted I try to assimilate into a normal were life. Whatever the hell
that
was supposed to be. Her instructions had included attending a support group for newly shifted weres, who had in turn tried to guide me through my first few shifts from human to wolf. They’d also tried to sell me on the joys of joining a pack, which had been one of the determining factors in my quitting the group.

Pack life, as it was explained to me, came with a laundry list of rules that my were teachers assured me weren’t as bad as they sounded. When the support group started to feel like a cult indoctrination, I’d run for the hills faster than you could say “I don’t like Kool-Aid.”

Dealing with all the media attention during Samson’s trial while simultaneously coming to terms with the shift from mundane to were had driven me into a solitary life, tucked away in the cabin where I had grown up. Everything and everyone I had ever known was gone, so I had built a new one out of the silence, loneliness, anger, and fear.

Faced once again with the prospect of running with other weres around me, I was filled with both excitement and dread. Nervousness covered me in a layer of sweat, filling the car with the sour smell of anxiety and the spicy notes of the wolf. My fingers flexed on the steering wheel, leaving damp marks on the leather even as the cool air outside began to leech into the vehicle. I knew I couldn’t hide away in here all night, lurking in the darkness of the SUV, but I still couldn’t will myself to move from the driver’s seat.

I watched the play of moonlight across the few faint scars on my knuckles, remnants of a childhood spent catching fish and chasing frogs with my grandfather. A wistful smile curved my lips as I remembered him smiling at me across the span of our battered blue cooler, packed by my grandmother with ham and cheese sandwiches and sodas. She’d always hide a couple of Twinkies at the bottom just for me.

The sound of approaching laughter roused me from my memories, and I saw a group walking towards the gravel lot. Despite the cold air and patches of snow on the ground, they wore t-shirts and loose sweat pants; clothes that were easily removed before the change. I looked down at my own old, faded Metallica t-shirt and jeans splattered with paint and worn through at the knees, glad that I’d remembered to toss them in the back of the SUV that morning before leaving the house.

Juliet was easy to pick out of the group, her pale blonde hair gleaming white in the moonlight. The air was filled with her laughter as she approached, arm in arm with another woman who looked to be about the same age as Juliet, her cropped brown hair emphasizing her androgynous figure. They had their heads bent together, dark hair mingling with light, as they chatted. The rest of the group consisted of an older man and woman who walked hand in hand, silver streaked heavily throughout their hair, and a tall, lanky man who trailed along behind the rest of the group, kicking at loose stones on the trail. I didn’t see Hank and wondered where the pack master was.

A sudden knock on my window that made a scream bubble up in the back of my throat answered my question. Smiling at me from the other side of the glass, Hank looked even more gorgeous than the last time I’d seen him. The light of the moon turned the sun-lightened streaks in his hair to silver, and made the bronze tan of his skin look as though he was gilded in gold. Only his eyes appeared unchanged by the moonlight, shining their usual ice blue as he looked down at me.

“You coming?” he asked, his voice muffled by the glass between us.

Sucking in a deep breath to steady my nerves I nodded and reached for the handle of the door. The door started to open before I could even curl my fingers around the handle as Hank opened it from the outside. Sliding out of the car, I shivered as much from the cold cutting through the thin fabric of my t-shirt as the nervousness gnawing at my gut.

Falling into step behind Hank, I followed him to the edge of the gravel as the others approached. Drawing level with them, I saw that the tall man at the back was in fact a teenager, maybe seventeen or eighteen, his towering height resolving into gangly limbs that moved with the awkwardness of someone going through yet another growth spurt. There was a vague similarity between his features and those of the older couple walking ahead of him, and I guessed that he was their son. My suspicions were confirmed when the woman turned to look back over her shoulder and called out, “Hurry up, Brandon. And quit dragging your feet.”

Muttering something about how he’d rather be playing
Call of Duty
, he picked up the pace a little, but didn’t straighten his slumped shoulders. When we all came to a stop in a loose circle, he remained on the fringes of the group, watching everyone through the fall of dark hair that hung down over one eye.

I’ll never understand what the attraction is to that haircut
, I thought, my fingers twitching with the desire to take a pair of scissors to his hair.

Lending credence to my suspicions that she’d been a cheerleader at some point, Juliet broke the silence with a cheery, “Hey, Riley! I’m really glad you decided to come.”

Feeling even more awkward as I became the unwilling center of attention, I replied with a weak smile and half wave. “Ah... hi.”

Oblivious to my discomfort, she launched into the introductions. “This is Samantha,” she said, smiling at the short-haired brunette beside her. “But she goes by Sam. And this is Derek and Gayle,” she added, gesturing to the older couple who both offered me a cheerful wave and friendly “Hello.” “And their son, Brandon.”

I wasn’t surprised when the sullen teenager barely spared a glance for me, looking at me through his shaggy bangs before turning his eyes back to the scuffed toes of his sneakers.

“Um... hi everyone,” I said, hating how uncomfortable I sounded.

“Are you thinking of joining the pack, Riley?” Sam asked in a bright, feminine voice that was completely at odds with her androgynous appearance.

Sliding my gaze over to Juliet, I pinned her with a sour look. I was soothed a little by her sheepish smile and shrug, but stubbornly held onto a nugget of my irritation to ease some of my nervousness.