CHAPTER 10

I Have the Scratches to Prove It

I woke in my own bed, when a heated body climbed in beside me and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me close. “Spooning,” I mumbled.

“Courting and living in sin,” Bruiser whispered back. “And your partners are gone to make groceries, so we have the place to ourselves.”

“Yeah?” I managed, waking up more slowly than I would have liked. Making groceries was strictly a New Orleans term, and it sounded odd coming from Bruiser’s mouth.

“Yes,” he said, a low thrum of need in his voice. He pressed his lips to the back of my neck, his hands spread wide across my stomach. His scent filled the tent of the covers, his usual citrusy cologne changed to something that smelled like blue cypress and oak moss, with a small amount of frankincense and a hint of . . . catnip. In bloom.

I rolled over in his arms, an action that twisted me in my own hair but brought my nose into contact with his chest. “You smell good,” I said.

“I’m glad you like it,” Bruiser said, tilting my chin up so our mouths met. His fingers slipped beneath my T-shirt and slid it off over my head. Brushed the lower curve of my breast as he did. I sighed into his mouth, a soft moaning sound.

“I had it blended with you in mind,” he whispered. And that was the last thing we said for a long, long time.

* * *

We were dressed and brewing tea and coffee when the guys got back, banging through the side door with bags of groceries. The Kid dropped three bags of veggies and one of canned, pasta-based dinners and sugary cereal on the kitchen table and took off to his tablets, muttering into his earbud cell something about encryption coding. Eli entered more slowly, placing his six bags of tofu, yogurt, green stuff, and steak on the table beside his brother’s. He looked back and forth between Bruiser and me and he might have smiled.

I didn’t look at his face long enough to judge, but my own flared and heated. “Shut up,” I grumbled.

“Babe,” he said, and grabbed a carrot and a stick of string cheese to munch as he put away the groceries. Stacking stuff on the top refrigerator shelf, he asked Bruiser, “What’s the latest on the action at vamp HQ? Janie got hit pretty bad yesterday.”

Bruiser smiled and went to the foyer, bringing back a leather satchel, a cross between a backpack and a briefcase, but looking expensive and well-worn. “Leo, Del, and I went over the data from the attack on Jane, and the Master of the City suggested some reading material from the library.” He set the satchel on the kitchen table and removed three heavy tomes from it, along with sealed files of loose papers, the files made of acid-free materials that had been treated to preserve antique paper, papyrus, sheepskin, and anything else the ancients had used for writing. He laid the books to the side and spread out a cloth on the table before placing the files atop it. He donned white gloves, smoothing the fingers into place.

Bruiser had been given a classical education, meaning that he could read ancient and modern Greek, Latin, and several more modern languages. He had previously been translating a Latin-ish history of witches from the original hand-bound manuscript, and so far, he had discovered a lot of history that we might be able to use when the EuroVamps came calling, but nothing about the bag of bones formerly hanging on the wall of sub-five and currently running around the city killing people. Not a thing. Research into things historical and not yet scanned into the clouds of the Internet was more time-consuming than I’d expected. He had been at it for several weeks.

“The escape of Joseph Santana,” Bruiser said, “and the deaths in the bar have necessitated a change in Leo’s usual modus operandi. He is suddenly much more helpful in directing me to materials that might assist our research. Of course, having access to Reach would have been more helpful than any reading material, but I’m taking what I can get.”

Reach—the world’s foremost researcher on all things vampiric—had disappeared from view following a visit by some particularly nasty vamps and a human torturer. They had hurt him and I hadn’t been able to discover how badly or where he was now. I hoped healing on some sunny beach somewhere, sipping umbrella drinks and working on his tan. Reach was a treacherous, double-dealing, entrepreneurial backstabber, who would have sold his mother to the highest bidder, but we had done business for a long time, and no one deserved to be tortured. No one.

“With the focus now shifted from the European Mithrans’ visit to Joseph Santana,” Bruiser said, “I’ve done some prep work in the material suggested by Leo, scanning for names used by Santana over the years, and trying to find information about his magical abilities.”

Eli made a snorting sound while putting away three dozen eggs, a bunch of celery, and a big bag of sweet potatoes.

Bruiser gave him a lazy grin. “Oddly enough, the search led me to the arcenciels, also called serpentes iridis.”

Eli closed the refrigerator and leaned a hip against the counter. “What do the dragons of light have to do with Santana?”

Bruiser said, “They, or the human magic users of the time, may have left behind some magical implements.” I thought about the hints of gold I’d seen on Santana, at neck and at wrist. And the wyrd that had fried my body. What if the spell he had spoken had been augmented by an ancient artifact? What if the wyrd had been a spell created by the arcenciels or ancient magic users?

“I do have something new for you all,” Bruiser said, and I got up to freshen my tea and Bruiser’s coffee. “First, Leo’s humans are tearing the Council House apart looking for documents pertaining to Joseph Santana—properties, habits, humans who might still be alive to offer him a lair. Second, the address of the lair from which Joseph Santana originally disappeared. The room was supposedly sealed and remains untouched to this day. It’s a remote possibility that Santana, in his currently unstable mode, might return there to lair, as a place that he remembers as comfortable and safe. Or there may be papers there that will lead us to a current lair.” With two fingers, he extended a folded slip of paper to Eli. “This will take you there. The caretaker has the keys.”

I let myself relax against the kitchen cabinet for just a moment and sipped my tea, my eyes lingering on Bruiser, showing him with my smile my appreciation for his efforts. The look he gave me back was a little more warm and made me think about his efforts in the bedroom earlier. I dropped my head, letting my hair slide forward, over my face, to touch the oversized mug at my mouth, hiding my heated cheeks.