Shelby sighed. "I"m with Internal Affairs."
You know that expression "Knock me over with a feather"? Well, screw the feather because I had just been hit by a Mack truck. "You"re IAB?" I whispered. "What the Hex are you doing here?"
"Morgan requested an undercover officer to partner with you," said Shelby. "To a.s.sess the viability of kicking you off the force."
That witch. After she had just paid me a backhanded compliment too. I was about to unload my uncensored feelings about Morgan and Shelby when I realized something: I still had a job. Rick wasn"t escorting me out the front door with a cardboard box full of my things.
"You gave me a good report," I said to Shelby, gobsmacked all over again.
Shelby smiled. "It"s not everyone who will go toe to toe with my uncle for me."
"Hex it," I muttered. "Shelby, I"ve said so many terrible things about you ..."
"Never mind that now," she said, picking up her bag. "I really just came by to tell you I"m taking a leave of absence from the department. And that it"ll probably be permanent."
"Why?" I demanded, standing up as she did. "You"re a great cop! You can"t leave just because you feel guilty about spying on me or some ridiculous thing like that."
She laughed once. "Don"t take it too personally, okay, Luna? I still have obligations to my family. They need me. The Nocturne City PD doesn"t. It"s as simple as that."
I did hug her then, and she embraced me, prim and short, just like the rest of her. "Don"t be a total stranger, okay?" I said. "Will do," said Shelby. "See you around, Luna."
"See you," I said. I watched her leave the squad room, then sat down at my desk and got back to work.
After my shift was over, I drove home and found a single light shining from the kitchen window of the cottage, just like it used to when Sunny lived there.
Dmitri greeted me with a grin instead of a mug of tea, but he was just as welcome. "I"ve been waiting for you, Ms. Working Woman. Did you bring your handcuffs?"
After a month, having Dmitri around most of the time was still extremely weird. I hadn"t seen him during the last phase, and now the moon was waxing again, within three or four nights of full.
"Is that all you think about?" I asked as I put my new gun and shield in the entry table drawer and locked it.
"Pretty much," said Dmitri, pulling me close. "I just want to get some quality time in before I take off for the phase, if you know what I mean."
"Dmitri." I pushed him away and held him at arm"s length. "Stay."
"No." He shook his head instantly. "I"m too unpredictable, Luna. With the daemon bite, I just don"t know what could happen. I black out totally now when the moonphase comes. I could hurt you."
I took his wrists and looked into his eyes. He wasn"t going to wriggle out of this. "You"ve never hurt me before."
"I wasn"t a monster before," he whispered. Hot sadness flooded through me. This This was what he thought of himself, of us? I took his face between my hands. was what he thought of himself, of us? I took his face between my hands.
"Dmitri, you are not not a monster." a monster."
"So you say," he muttered.
"I do," I agreed. "Deep down, you know it too. And I say you"re going to stay. I"m not afraid of the daemon bite. I"m not afraid of you."
"Maybe you should be," Dmitri murmured.
"Maybe." I shrugged. "But I still want you to stay."
His jaw worked like he wanted to object, but finally he wrapped his arms around me, pressing me against his chest so I could hear his heart beating. "You"re the most d.a.m.n stubborn woman I"ve ever known, do you realize that?"
"I do," I said, "and I know you wouldn"t want me any other way."
Dmitri took me by the wrist and opened the front door. "Come here." He led me out onto the drive and we both basked under the moon, letting it fill us and tantalize us with the promise of the phase. "This is you and me," Dmitri whispered. "No matter what. You and me, Luna. I promise."
It was sweet of him to try and rea.s.sure me, really, but as I leaned against Dmitri"s solid body, saying a silent prayer to the bright lady for Vincent Blackburn and all the nameless, faceless victims that Seamus had claimed, I knew the only certainty we had was that we didn"t know anything the future might hold. No one could promise me a happy ending, not even Dmitri.
But I"d face the unknown as I always had, and with Dmitri"s help, I"d be able to do it with my eyes open.
"Luna?" Dmitri said. "You okay?"
"Fine," I murmured, looking out over the ocean. "Let"s go inside."
"Something on your mind?" Dmitri asked mischievously.
I kissed him, and let him lead me back to the cottage. "No. I just want to enjoy the time we have."
Read on for a preview of SECOND SKIN
Coming from St. Martin"s Paperbacks in March 2009
When werewolves from Nocturne City"s oldest packs are found shot point-blank through the head, homicide detective Luna Wilder isn"t sure what"s killing them or why ... and now the killer is determined to make Luna their next victim. To make matters worse, her boyfriend Dmitri"s daemon bite is getting worse, weakening him and putting a major strain on their relationship.
Luna discovers the murders are linked to the Wendigo, shape-shifting cousins of werewolves who drink the blood of their victims for strength. Luna doesn"t know whether Wendigo leader Lucas Kennuka is friend or foe, but he"s clearly determined to wrest her heart from Dmitri. And if Luna doesn"t discover who"s behind the killings, it could destroy her fragile relationship-and cost Luna her life....
My cell phone buzzed against my hip. The Caller ID blinked dmitri. "Hold on," I instructed Bryson, who was standing obstinately in front of my car with a hangdog look.
"This bed is awfully big without you in it." Dmitri"s voice sounded like dark red wine spilled on pale skin, Eastern Europe blended up with clove smoke.
"Hi, honey," I said flatly. Bryson gave me the eye, like I"d just started speaking in Esperanto.
"Do you know what I wanna do to you right now? I"d start between your thighs ..."
"Sure, no problem. Gotta go." I slapped the phone shut and jerked open my door. "The answer is still no, Bryson." I turned the Fairlane"s engine over with a roar. "Either get out of my way or be my speed b.u.mp."
"It"s weres!" Bryson yelled at me. "Dead weres! Four of them so far!"
I hit the gas and squealed out of the motor-pool lot before he could finish, leaving him in a trail of my exhaust.
At home, I unlocked the front door of the cottage softly. The sky was still light at the very edges, over the water, pink and frayed like glimpsing silk through a torn skirt. "Dmitri, you awake?" I called. It was a courtesy. Dmitri could scent me as soon as I stepped out of the car in the little circular driveway that pushed up against my broken-down rental cottage on the edge of the dune.
"Up here." He didn"t sound husky and pleasant anymore. I kicked off my flip-flops and climbed up the stairs to the bedroom rather more slowly than a woman coming home to her s.e.xier-than-anything were-boyfriend who had given up his pack and his entire life to warm her bed. Not nearly as fast. Not nearly.
"Hey," I said, sticking my head around the door. "Thanks for waiting up for me."
The lights were off, but I didn"t have a problem seeing Dmitri wrapped in nothing at all atop my sheets. It was stuffy in the room, stale and unpleasant, and I sneezed.
"If you"re sick, do me a favor and don"t spread it around."
"Oh, gee. Hex you too." I sat down on the edge of the bed and slipped out of my sweats, rolling over to lie next to Dmitri. He shoved me away. "Get off. It"s too hot."
"Oh, G.o.ds," G.o.ds," I hissed at him. "Look, I"m sorry. I was tied up when you called and I came straight home to apologize. I didn"t realize that tonight was the night we both acted like twelve-year-olds." I hissed at him. "Look, I"m sorry. I was tied up when you called and I came straight home to apologize. I didn"t realize that tonight was the night we both acted like twelve-year-olds."
There was silence for a long time, and I listened to Dmitri breathe and smelled his sweat mixed in with beer and a little bit of soap. "I"m sorry too," he said finally. "Just... I heard someone else"s voice, and I a.s.sumed .. ."
"Sweetie." I took his hand in the dark. "My captain is a man. I work with four guys. h.e.l.l, even my manicurist has a p.e.n.i.s."
He stiffened again. "Was that your manicurist I heard on the call?"
"No," I said, moving my free hand over his stomach, fingers scrubbing in small circles. I stopped, thinking about the desperate way Bryson had followed me.
"Who was it, Luna?" Dmitri sucked in his breath.
"It doesn"t matter. It was n.o.body I want to keep thinking about."
He jerked away from me and sat up with a snarl. "Tell me who was f.u.c.king there with you! I can smell him all over your skin!"
I sat up too, rod-straight, and we quivered silently with our backs turned to each other. "It was David Bryson," I said. "He accosted me in the locker room after I was washing the blood spatter from a suicide jumper off of me, and he followed me out to my car and I have had a really s.h.i.tty s.h.i.tty G.o.ds-d.a.m.ned night, by the way, so thanks for asking and you have sweet dreams." G.o.ds-d.a.m.ned night, by the way, so thanks for asking and you have sweet dreams."
I s.n.a.t.c.hed my pillow and the blanket from the bed and started to storm out, but noticed just before I reached the door that my pillow case was decorated with blood droplets.
Those hadn"t been there when I"d left for work. "Dmitri?" I said.
He rolled over with a snarl. "Oh no," I exclaimed, grabbing him by the shoulder and rolling him back toward me. "What on earth ..."
His face was puffy at the jaw and his left eye was blackened and sc.r.a.ped on the orbital bone. The cuts were already healed over, but the old blood remained. I reached over Dmitri and turned on the bedside lamp b.u.mping his side as I did so. He hissed in pain when I brushed his ribs.
"Okay," I said, as I surveyed the cut lip, the array of bruises on his torso, and fresh scars on his knuckles. "Don"t tell me. You went down to the slaughterhouse and beat up some meat, and the meat won."
"Funny," he muttered. "Real funny."
Guilt sucker-punched me. "I"m sorry. I didn"t see ... What happened? I"m sorry we fought." My words tumbled like gangly things, not sure of their legs. "I"m sorry," I mumbled again.
"No big deal," Dmitri said, throwing a hand over his eyes. "Just a misunderstanding."
I got off the bed and walked around to his side, and stood over him with my hands on my hips, glaring, until he rolled his eyes. "Bleeding all over the house?" I said. "That pretty much defines "Big Deal." Who did this to you?"
Dmitri sighed. "I walked down a street I thought was safe, and it wasn"t. Territory had shifted. I got jumped."
"By what, a Transformer?" I said. The bruising was bad. Dmitri was tough, and big, and had daemon-powered blood running in him, a bite that turned him from were to something else whenever he got too angry or too ... anything. The bite made him black out and a host of other unpleasantries, but it also made him d.a.m.n near invulnerable. This shouldn"t have happened.
"Six or seven weres from some pack running things on Cannery Street now," he said. "They came up on me fast, had baseball bats, mostly. I think one had one of those police batons. Anyway. I knew you"d freak out so I thought we could discuss it after I healed."
"This shouldn"t have happened," I said out loud. "You weren"t doing anything wrong. You don"t even have pack status anymore. What would they gain from beating you?" I bit my lip. "How "How did they beat you?" did they beat you?"
I was babbling like a cop, trying to work through the permutations and find the conclusion, close the case. Dmitri showed his teeth. "I disrespected them." His fists worked. "They were within their rights, f.u.c.ked up as it is. You wouldn"t understand."
"I wouldn"t understand?" I demanded, my old anger coming back. wouldn"t understand?" I demanded, my old anger coming back.
"You"ve never had to deal with pack law," said Dmitri. "You get off easy whenever you run into territorial borders because you"re so d.a.m.n willful. I just hope you never hit on a pack with a better hand at dominating other weres than you."
"Gee, thanks for the thought," I snapped. Silence again for a minute, while we both tried to stay calm. Finally, I tamped down my frustration and got myself under control. I was getting good at that, lately. "Do you need an ice pack?"
"No."
"I still don"t understand why you got into a fight in the first place," I said. "Can"t you just back off, accept that they"re dominant?" I knew that you could, from experience.
"I could," Dmitri said, his eyes swimming with black. "But I didn"t."
Oh, Hex it. My skin was full of thorn-p.r.i.c.ks in that moment, as the air around me grew cold. "Dmitri. What did you do to those weres?"
His eyes were full black now, the daemon blood coming even as we sat there, calm. "Nothing they didn"t deserve."
My own were instincts snarled Get away, Get away, but Dmitri lunged across the bed and grabbed me before I could move. He was so much faster with the daemon bite ... but Dmitri lunged across the bed and grabbed me before I could move. He was so much faster with the daemon bite ...
One hand held the side of my face. The other traced down my body, rough palm on my bare skin. Over my hips, past the V of my thighs. My body responded to him, but my brain was busy thinking Oh s.h.i.t Oh s.h.i.t as I stared into his black eyes. as I stared into his black eyes.
"Dmitri," I said softly. "Tell me what you did."
His hand stopped moving, just shy of its goal. "I didn"t want to," he said, in a voice so small and wounded I wasn"t even sure it was his. "I was gonna walk away but one of them said something about my mate... about you. They knew who I was, who you were, and I..."
I shut my eyes, all of the fear and tension running out, leaving me rubbery.