Branded Read online

  She held up the sack. I caught a whiff of greasy goodness.

  “I got us some lunch.”

  I scrunched up my face. “Lunch? Isn’t it…?” I turned toward the window and noticed for the first time that the shade was drawn. I had assumed the room was darkened because it was still night. Then I saw the pale light peeking through the sides of the shade. “It’s tomorrow?”

  “Well, tomorrow is tomorrow. But, yeah, it’s today.”

  I blinked a few times and gaped at her as if she spoke one of the few foreign languages I didn’t know.

  She laughed, kicked the door closed behind her, and came over with the sack. The closer she came, the thicker the scent from whatever was in the bag grew. French fries for sure. So probably burgers. Nasty ones, too. From a fast food joint. Nasty food that tasted so good.

  She set the sack on the coffee table in front of the couch and sat down beside me. “So, you’re still alive.”

  I nodded. The movement made my head spin a little.

  “You still look like crap, though.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You hungry?”

  My stomach responded for me with a low grumble.

  Fiona raised her eyebrows. “Guess so.”

  I watched her unpack the fries and burgers, laying them out on paper napkins. My mouth watered. Meanwhile, my eyes enjoyed the sight of Fiona. She had changed into a pair of tight but not ridiculous looking jeans, faded. She wore a green sleeveless blouse and had her hair in a ponytail. No makeup. Which was good, because I liked the natural look of her.

  “What are you staring at?” she asked without looking away from her preparation of our meal.

  “That’s a good question,” I said. “Who the heck are you?”

  She said nothing until she had finished laying out the food. Then she laid her hands flat on her lap and twisted to face me. “I’m not a normal,” she said. “And neither are you.”

  I raised an eyebrow. Already we were heading in an unexpected direction. Not a normal, huh? That could mean a million different things. “Are you a witch?” I asked.

  She screwed her lips up to one side. “What makes you say that?”

  I shrugged. Winced for it, too. “Just a guess. Maybe some wishful thinking, too, since if you’re any good, you could deal with this pain in my shoulder a little more…expediently.”

  “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but while my mother taught me a few basic home remedies, we didn’t have any magic, natural or acquired. At least, not that kind.”

  That narrowed down possibilities. If she wasn’t any form of practitioner, that meant she was…she was not human.

  “Shifter?” I asked with breathy disbelief.

  Fiona put her finger on her nose and pointed at me.

  “What kind?”

  “Is that anything to ask a girl on a first date?”

  I laughed. “Are we still on our first date?”

  “Well, we never ended up saying goodbye. We’ve been together except for when I left to get us lunch.” She shrugged. “Still, I think you need to share more before I do.”

  “Fair enough,” I said and sighed nice and long. For a moment, I tried to piece together a carefully crafted answer, something that would give her enough information to satisfy her curiosity, but not too much to freak her out. Then I realized if she hadn’t freaked out yet, she wasn’t likely to. Besides, she was a shifter. She had seen her fair share of the weird. After all, she was raised by weird.

  “I’m a sorcerer,” I said.

  She snorted. “Duh. I figured that out the second time I saw you come to visit your mom when you checked her in at the home.”

  I think my jaw hit my lap. I stared at her for an eternity. Speechless. “You knew?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not an idiot, Sebastian. Besides the way you carry yourself, the way you smell, and the little crackle of energy that usually surrounds you, I have seen you with your mom, seen you try to bring her out of whatever she fell into.”

  I frowned. She had seen things I had thought I had conducted in secret. Which meant she might have seen—

  “Yes,” she said, reading the question on my face. “I saw you give her the potion that caused her to seize yesterday.”

  I swallowed. It hurt, not because of the wound—though it didn’t help—but because my throat had turned so dry I barely had a drop of saliva to spare. All this time, she had known. She knew more about me, I realized, than I did about her.

  “You don’t have to worry,” she said. “I haven’t said anything to anybody.”

  I stared at her for a while longer. She had stumped. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She smiled. “You’re welcome. Now, I’ll tell you what kind of shifter I am if you tell me what’s up with that bite and why a sorcerer like yourself has managed to end up so weak.”

  “Good questions.”

  “I know.”

  I squirmed for a minute. I didn’t really want to go over what had happened with the vamps. Not because I didn’t trust Fiona with the information. She had proven she could keep a secret—her own and mine—perfectly well. But talking about it made it more real than I wanted it to be.

  “Can we eat first? I have a feeling once I’ve laid it all out, I won’t have an appetite.”

  “Sure.”

  So we ate. And once that was done, I told Fiona everything. All about the vamps. About the infection I was fighting inside of me. And about what Anda and the Dalton brothers had wanted with me last night.

  She took it in stride. Though I could see the worry working in her eyes when I admitted the infection had weakened me simply by virtue of having to use my strength to keep it from taking over.

  When I finished, she thanked me for my honesty.

  She didn’t scream.

  She didn’t run.

  Instead, she stood up and took off all of her clothes.

  I was struck dumb by this sudden disrobing, but I did not complain.

  She didn’t seem to mind my admiration. And, once naked, she shared with me what kind of shifter she was. By showing me.

  I had never seen such a beautiful tiger in my life.

  Chapter Seventeen

  After Fiona’s amazing reveal, she got me a T-shirt her old boyfriend had left behind, then insisted I get some more rest. I couldn’t get the sight of her shifting out of my mind. It’s not that I had never encountered a shifter before. Hell, I’d fulfilled a contract on a few. But mostly werewolves and demon shifters who turned into ugly things that wanted to eat people.

  And none of them with a beautiful naked body.

  Experiencing that with Fiona reached a whole different level. While I never touched her, nor she me, there was an intimate connection formed that I could not deny. She had shared something deep and personal with me that made the naked part seem trivial.

  Of course, I still liked that part, too. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no monk.

  I tried to do as she said, and rest. But I couldn’t. I lay on the couch, staring at the ceiling, watching her shift over and over in my mind’s eye. Meanwhile, she sat on an arm chair, her feet tucked under her, reading a leather bound book that looked like something I’d find in my parents’ basement.

  Even though I couldn’t sleep, I remained quiet. It was the best I could do.

  Unfortunately, this also meant suffering the pulsing pain in my shoulder that would rise and recede like a tide. I did take a small chance. I clenched my father’s watch and pulled energy from it and guided it toward my wound. I let it radiate there, easing the pain and, I think, pushing the healing process along a little.

  I had to stop, though, when the cold, worming sensation of the infection started up again.

  “Okay,” Fiona said out of the blue. “This could work.”

  I turned my head to look at her. “What?”

  She tapped at the page in her book. “This could help with the healing.” She held up the book so I coul
d see the cover. The title was written in runes, and faded badly. But from what I could gather, it looked like an herbalists’ handbook. And not the kind of herbalist that sells over the counter fish oil and echinacea gel caps. The stuff in this book would have been the real deal.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  “Was my mom’s. Like I said, she wasn’t a practitioner in any formal sense, but her version of home remedies involved more than the old wives’ tale kind of stuff.”

  I believed it. Members of the supernatural world did not grow up in a vacuum like normals did. They knew their origins and the powers that existed around them. They didn’t have to be sorcerers or wizards or witches or mages or whatever else you wanted to call the various kinds of magical practitioners. They were the magic.

  Fiona stood and came over to sit on the edge of the couch. Instinctively, I rested a hand on her back. She felt so familiar, so comfortable. And, lucky for me, she didn’t shy away or cringe from my touch. She leaned into it. There wasn’t much to her blouse. I could feel the ridges of her spine through the light fabric. The feel awoke something primal in me. Had I been in better physical condition, I probably would have acted on those urges.

  I noticed something else, though. Something on the disturbing side. I could sense the blood flowing through her. It was hard to explain. Just that I was aware of its flow on an instinctual level. Almost like I could feel the beat of her pulse in sync with my own.

  I had never felt anything like it. And it awakened a strange craving in me. One that, once I realized what it was, I recoiled from.

  I wanted to taste her blood.

  I cried out and yanked my hand away from her as if I’d been burned.

  She looked at me with panic in her eyes. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

  Gasping and trembling, I shook my head. “No. You’re fine. It’s not you.”

  “What then?”

  As good as it had felt to be completely honest with her earlier, I could not share this with her. Not only would it freak her out for certain, it would alarm her to a realization I myself had to face. Despite my efforts, the infection had managed to get some work done on me. Maybe one of those times I had redirected my energy for a moment. Maybe even that moment where I had just tried to ease my pain.

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Just a…a jolt from the shoulder. I’ll be fine.”

  She didn’t look like she believed me, but she didn’t argue.

  I changed the subject, pointing to her book. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  “It’s a poultice. There’s some weird ingredients in it, but I know where to get them.”

  I thought of Sly. “I know a guy, too. In fact, I was thinking of having him cook me up something.”

  “Oh.” For a moment, she looked hurt, as if I had rejected her.

  “Not that I don’t think you can do it,” I said. “But he’s a family friend and a long time practitioner.”

  “A normal?”

  I nodded. “In a technical sense. But I doubt anyone would call him that.”

  She smiled, but it looked weak and unfelt. “You want me to drive you over there?”

  “Would you mind? I need to ask him some questions anyway. About last night.”

  “You think he was somehow involved?”

  “He was the only one, besides the vamps themselves, who knew about the infection. Yet the Ministry found out awfully fast and put a contract on me, no questions asked.”

  “I can imagine their concern. Someone like you would make a scary powerful vampire.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Problem is, I am not a vampire. And the Ministry really should have checked that out before offering the contract.”

  “Sounds like they might have it in for you.”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way, but she was right. I had never had any issues with the Ministry before. My family line was long respected in the community. While my parents weren’t very political, they knew their way around the system. They often had to work with magical administrations in foreign countries in the line of their research. They probably would have made great diplomats if that had been their thing.

  As for as me, personally? I always figured my relationship with the Ministry was solid. After all, I did a lot of work for them and I had done it well.

  Crap. None of this made any sense.

  Fiona rested a hand on my arm. Again I could sense the blood pulsing through her. A bitter tasting saliva rolled over my tongue. I wondered if it was filled with some kind of vampire enzyme made for processing blood. A stupid thought. Vampirism didn’t work that way. There was nothing sciencey about the undead. They were an affront to biology and physics.

  But apparently my frightened mind wanted to attribute some understandable aspect to what was happening to me.

  It took every effort not to pull away from Fiona’s touch. I didn’t want her to think she repulsed me, when it was me who repulsed me.

  “We’ll figure this out,” she said, “together.”

  Uh-oh. That was the rub, wasn’t it. Because no matter who Fiona was, shifter or mortal, didn’t matter. She couldn’t help me with this. I’d be irresponsible to let her. Whatever I was involved with was clearly dangerous. I did not want to put her at risk.

  “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” I said.

  “Ah, I sense a but coming.”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt. I’m pretty damn fond of you. And it’s been a decade since I met a woman I can actually relate to. I’d like to see this go somewhere.”

  “You can’t see it go anywhere if you shut me out.”

  “I don’t want to shut you out. I just…don’t want you around to get hurt while I untie this ugly knot I’m in.”

  “I want to help.”

  “I know. That is awesome. You have no idea how nice it is just to be here with you.” Except for the whole feeling your blood thing. “Which is why I don’t want you involved. I want to have that official second date. One without an arrow wound or vampire infection.”

  She took her hand off my arm. I felt both relief and sadness.

  She snapped her book shut. “Okay,” she said. “At least let me drive you to your friend’s.”

  “Yeah. That would be great.”

  She stood, went over to the bookcase and returned the book to its spot. She turned to me. “Do I need to carry you?”

  Again, I saw her in my mind’s eye shifting. A shiver ran through me. Knowing what I did now, I had little doubt she could carry me if it came to that. “I doubt your neighbors would feel comfortable seeing me riding a tigress out the door.”

  “They’d get over it.”

  I smiled. “How about you just help me stand up. I’m going to have to walk on my own eventually. Might as well get used to using my feet again.”

  She came over, helped me up, then we shuffled out to her car together. The whole time I could feel her heartbeat thrumming against me. Having so much of her body in contact with me made it impossible to ignore. And every time I looked at her neck, my mouth filled with that bitter spit.

  This Toft Kitchens dude better know how to fix me, damn it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I had Fiona drop me off outside, explaining to her that until I knew I could trust Sly, it was better they not meet. I hated to think that way about a guy who had been friends with my family longer than I’d been alive. He had become a sort of surrogate father after my parents’ accident. Still, I didn’t have any idea who else could have shared info with the Ministry about my condition.

  The bell rang when I shuffled through the door. I had managed to cross the sidewalk from the curb outside, but pushing the door open took all the energy I had left. I realized my weakened state wasn’t just from the arrow wound. I had drained myself on so many levels. The infection was exactly that—a magical illness. And it was taking its toll on all parts of me.

  I stumbled sideways and knocked into a magazine rack loaded with titles like
American Weed and Ganja Weekly. I had no idea so many periodicals could be devoted to the simple art of getting high on hash.

  “Whoa, dude, are you all right?”

  I squinted toward the drawling voice. The big kid was behind the counter again, looking at me like I had three heads and a tail. He looked a little pale, too. And here he was judging me?

  I waved a hand. “Fine. Where’s Sly?”

  The kid didn’t look like he believed me, but he didn’t argue. He rushed into the back without another word.

  I shuffled forward and nearly ended up flat on my face in the middle of the smoke shop. Would have, had Sly not rushed out and caught me by the arm. He didn’t ask questions, just guided me into the back, waving off the kid who stood there with his mouth hanging open. When Sly had me in the back, he swung the door shut and turned the lock.

  Weird. Why had he done that?

  He helped me limp to a chair by his bench o’ alchemy and plopped me down in it. The wooden frame creaked against my sudden weight. Sly stepped back and gave me a once over, sighed, and shook his head. Still, without speaking, he moved to his bench and got to work mixing something up.

  I stared at him, feeling numb, like my whole body had been shot with Novocain. It was weird. All this over an arrow in my shoulder? That didn’t seem right. I thought I was healing.

  “When were you shot?” Sly asked.

  I furled my brow. At least, I think I did. I couldn’t feel my face. “How did you know about—”

  He spat air and threw me a dirty glare. “Don’t insult me.”

  I didn’t know why he was so pissed at me. After all, he was the one who had given me up to the Ministry. Or not. Hell, I didn’t know what to think, and at the moment, thinking felt too damn hard.

  “How did you—”

  “Shut up.” He vigorously stirred something as yellow as mustard, but the consistency of water, in a wide-mouthed mason jar, the kind of thing you might store some of Grandpa’s moonshine in. At least, that’s how I imagined such a container would look.

  Oooh, boy. Time to bring my brain back to the moment.

  “Sly,” I said and hesitated, waiting for him to shut me down again. He muttered something under his breath, but kept stirring as if I hadn’t said anything.