Silent Cravings (46 page)

Chapter Seventeen

T
he day had started out well enough. Christoph was a little sore, but that loosened up as he moved around. He wasn’t surprised to see that Ashi was already up, showered, dressed, and finished doing forms. He was sitting on the couch and looked agonizingly bored.

“Hey,” Christoph said.

Ashi grunted.

“How’s it going?”

Grunt.

“Can you teach me more stuff?”

Ashi shrugged. “What do you want to learn?”

“You’re the master.”

“Choose something or get out of my face.”

“Monkey boxing.”

Ashi snorted. “Right. Well, you put down ‘two pair ironwood sticks, one and one half feet long’ on the shopping list and see if we get them.”

Christoph went to the kitchen. There was a small notepad stuck to the fridge door listing various grocery items. Under “2 chicken breasts, bone/skinless” he wrote “4 ironwood sticks, 1-1/2 ft. long”.

As Christoph walked back into the living room, Ashi shook his head. “You actually wrote that down?”

“Miracles happen.”

Analie called Isabelle to let her know she wasn’t feeling well. Bad cramps. She’d do her homework in her room, alone.

She all but sprinted to the kitchen for breakfast, then immediately back to her room.

Sure, these vampires were downright cuddly compared to the ones she knew from stories, but there wasn’t any point in letting the whole world know you were pink and flat-faced for a couple days out of the month.

Mouse was having a fabulous day. She was too wound up to take her day sleep so had offered to take Wesley’s shift and guard the house. She bled off some of her energy by working on her accuracy with a schlager blade.

She set a small block of wood on top of the counter that overlooked the kitchen and proceeded to go through forms. First position, thrust, second position, thrust, third position, thrust, fourth position, thrust. She checked, and was pleased to see that in each case, she’d hit the same tiny knot.

She went through a few more repetitions, but was interrupted by a commotion by the front door. Curious, she went to check it out, which was the only reason Analie didn’t see her when she came out for breakfast.

What was going on?

Christoph and Ashi had shifted equipment aside in the gym to have room for sparring. Neither of them wanted to throw each other into Thad and Sebastian’s TV. There weren’t any sparring mats, so they agreed there would be some hard falls.

Three minutes later, Christoph fought dirty and used a cheap shot to get Ashi in the kidney. After Ashi stopped doing his Dance of Agony, he made Christoph stand—sort of—with his knees bent at ninety-degree angles, spread out, back straight, with his arms stretched straight out in front of him.

“What’s this called, other than sadistic and unusual punishment?” Christoph asked as his legs and shoulders started burning.

“Horse stance. I’m making you do the kung fu version.” Ashi was standing in front of him with a broomstick. “The angles are much more drastic than, say, the karate version.”

“It hurts.”

“You’ll develop excellent balance and form with this stance.”

“‘Develop’ implies I will be doing this a lot.”

“You will.”

Christoph shifted, then yelped as Ashi rapped his head with the broomstick.

“This sucks.”

“Funny, I’m having a lot of fun.”

Thad stumbled in the front door clutching his bleeding shoulder. His right arm hung at his side, and his shirt and pants were torn, bloodied, and dirty. Mouse rushed forward, dropping her sword. One of the daytime human security guards slid in after him and slammed the front door shut while Mouse yanked Thad into the hallway. She had to step into the sun streaming into the foyer to do it, only for a few brief seconds, but it was enough to turn some of her smooth skin a deep, harsh red.

Ignoring the pain, she knelt to examine Thad’s wounds, placing a cool, soothing hand to his forehead to hold him down as his muscles seized up. She had to prize up his fingers to see his shoulder, though she let him go back to clutching it to keep pressure on the wound once she saw what had happened.

Someone had stabbed him. There were a few defensive wounds on his palms and fingers from where he held up his hands to ward off some slashing blows. Another shallow cut was on the back of his leg, not too deep. Someone had tried to hamstring him but hadn’t succeeded.

While she tended to his injuries, tearing off strips of her skirt, the security guard hurriedly gave orders into his walkie-talkie. The guard on the monitors was reporting a group of five running away from the building and he’d get on the horn to the cops. A third guard on patrol around back was ordered to pick Jessica up from school to deal with Thad’s injuries. Some of the other vampires crept out of their apartments, watching, worried and silent, drawn by the shouting and scent of blood.

Thad was whimpering in pain, every breath hissed in through his teeth. He clutched at Mouse, bloodied fingers tangled in her shirt as she kept pressure on the wound. None of the injuries were fatal. The worst was the shoulder, and while there was some muscle damage, probably some to the tendons, too, it hadn’t been low enough to hit a lung.

The security guard was looking green, muttering something about making sure the bad guys were gone before rushing out the front door. It would take a while for Jessica to arrive. Thad was pale from blood loss, though now that he wasn’t running for his life and was flat on his back, he wasn’t bleeding as heavily.

“White Hats,” he gasped, chest heaving with terror and pain. “It was the White Hats!”

Mouse nodded, easing up her other hand from his brow to put a single finger on his lips to gesture he be quiet. She didn’t want him to do more damage to himself in his efforts to tell her what happened. He settled back with a groan, squeezing his eyes shut, and she put her hand back on his brow.

Some time later, the security guard rushed in with Jessica hot on his heels. She flung her schoolbooks aside, dropping to her knees on the other side of Thad, checking the injuries as best she could. He hissed in pain when Mouse moved her hand, but otherwise was holding up.

“Christ, this is unbelievable… Thad, I’m going to have Mouse move you upstairs, okay? I’ve got to disinfect and stitch these cuts. All right?”

He nodded, not opening his eyes.

Mouse slid her arms under him, lifting him. Most of the bleeding had stopped, but Jessica put her hand over the make-shift bandage, keeping pressure on it while Mouse carried him. He bit off a cry of pain, the security guard and vampires anxiously looking on while Mouse took him upstairs.

Ashi was coming out of Thad’s apartment with two buckets of water when the group came upstairs. He frowned and set the buckets down against the wall, hurrying to the gym. Christoph was still crouched miserably in the center of the room.

“Thad’s hurt,” Ashi told him.

Christoph was immediately upright and rushing (after the initial stagger of protesting muscles) into the hallway, Ashi following at a slower pace.

“Thad? Dude? You okay?” Christoph said, approaching the three. In Goliath terms, “okay” covered a broad spectrum of conditions, excluding “about to die.”

Jessica answered since Thad was a bit too busy hyperventilating to respond.

“He’s been stabbed.”

Mouse hurried inside to the couch; Jessica broke away to run to her room and gather her medical equipment. After setting him down, Mouse resumed putting pressure on Thad’s shoulder, lightly resting her other hand on his cheek, soothing him as best she could. It wasn’t helping much.

After a few hissing breaths, he started cursing and growling threats of revenge on the White Hats, clutching at a pillow. Mouse turned a helpless look at Christoph, not knowing what else to do for the injured human.

Christoph was furious. He didn’t know who the hell the White Hats were, but he was going to find them and kill
every single one of them
. Damn being pink. Damn being weak. He was marching right to wherever the hell they were to rip their heads off.

Ashi saw the slow boil going on in Christoph’s thought process and grabbed his arm. “You
are not
avenging anyone until you’re Were again.”

“I’m going to
murder—”

Ashi smacked the back of his head. “Plan it later. Right now he just needs his packmates.”

Christoph quieted down for about four seconds before blurting, “Thad, when I get fuzzy again, I’m going to take them down.
Every single one of them
.” He turned to Ashi. “Who do we know who can kill at least some of them?”

Ashi shrugged. “Thorn for sure. Mask might. Maybe some Thistles if they’re feeling violent.”

Christoph nodded and stood firmly by Thad like a guard dog, seething.

Mouse had a pained look. Jessica rushed in with supplies in her arms.

Thad gritted his teeth and spat out a few words. “Fucking cock-sucking
asshats
! They jumped me on my way home from work. I’m gonna kill them myself, cowardly
assholes!
”

“Thad, shut up and calm down!” Jessica scolded. She used some scissors to cut his shirt off, ignoring his protests and revealing numerous tattoos littering his skin, right along with a number of shallow cuts he’d gotten in addition to the one on his shoulder.

Next, she pulled on some latex gloves and rummaged through a bag she’d brought in. She cracked the bottle of hydrogen peroxide and poured some onto a cotton ball, thoroughly soaking it.

“Can one of you guys go get a clean dish towel and some water boiling on the stove? The towels are under the sink. Bring me the water after it’s boiled for about five minutes. Mouse, hold him down, please.”

Without waiting to see if they followed orders, she started swabbing at the shoulder wound. Mouse gingerly held Thad down as he gave a shriek while Jessica disinfected the cuts.

Ashi went into the kitchen, filled a pot with water from the sink, and set it on the stove. Christoph stayed with Thad, set off again by his anger.

“Don’t you worry. We’re going to get some Blackthorns here and they are going to kill those sons of leprous bitches. I
promise
you.”

Ashi rolled his eyes. Blackthorn was definitely an odd pack, keeping to themselves and only venturing out when their allies called on them. Gregory had once ordered a small group of warriors to help Blackthorn and saved it from almost certain annihilation. Despite this, they were more likely to laugh in your face than answer your call when you asked them for help.