Page 30 of Cold Sacrifice

My stomach tightened. “Yeah,” I murmured. “I did get the feeling he was keeping something from me.”

Finally, he stopped staring out his window and looked at me. “You’ll help him anyway.”

I hesitated. “I can’t risk you, Joe.”

“Dammit, Kait. I can’t be the reason, every damn time, that you have to give something up or not help save lives or whatever else you need to do. I can’t be that.”

“I don’t know how we can keep you safe from her. She absolutely can make you fight me. She can make you kill yourself.” I shook my head. “That can’t happen.”

“I know,” he said, and turned back to his window.

“I have to kill her,” I said, but my voice was barely above a whisper.

He heard me anyway. “You don’t want to?”

“She worked damn hard to get back here after years in the ground. She’s mad, of course. She’d have to be. I can’t imagine what horror she lived through, and then to be thrown into a mass grave where she somehow survived for decades…” I swallowed hard before continuing. “But she’s a danger to the city, the vampires, and you. I have to fight her. I have to kill her.” And my voice was stronger by the end of that sentence.

He said nothing, likely still trying to deal with the trauma of being controlled so completely and the fear of knowing it could happen again.

“I’ll figure it out,” I said, as I drove down the long lane that led to my house. “I know a guy.”

He didn’t ask what guy. But when we climbed the porch and he got a look at my face, he came immediately out of his despair. “Kait! Your face. I didn’t…” He pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes, then took my shoulders to turn me toward the porch light. “That looks fucking bad. I’ll call Jared and he can get Doc Hayes out here. Then—”

I patted his arm. “Let’s just get inside and I’ll look at it. I’m sure it looks worse than it is.” But honestly, I wasn’t feeling great. The throbbing bites had only gotten more intense the longer I was around the necromancer, and the numbness was beginning to wear off my face. The wound burned like her whip had been made of fire.

I needed to call Bastien, and I needed to call my old friend Sixten. He could get me anything I needed, and I was going to ask him for something I’d never asked him for.

A person.

If he couldn’t get one for me, I’d ask the council, but I couldn’t trust them. Not with Joe’s life.

But first, I needed to tend to my face.

“Dawn’s close, Joe,” I told him. “Go to sleep. I’ll get Lucy up if I need her.” Ash careened around the corner, yipping excitedly, but when I leaned over to pet him, the pressure in my face grew more intense.

I went up to my bedroom and relieved myself of some weapons on my way to my bathroom, Ash at my heels. I flipped on the bathroom light and looked at my face in the mirror above the sink.

I’d been hit in the face with a wicked whip, and that was exactly how it looked. I’d need to shift to heal more quickly. Also, the shift would get rid of any scarring. I hoped.

I took five minutes to pet Ash after he jumped up on my bed, and then I grabbed an old t-shirt and hurried to the kitchen. I planned on going to the backyard to shift, then coming back in to eat everything in the kitchen as I called first Bastien, and then Sixten.

Zach was already in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a cup of coffee. He stopped mid-yawn when he saw my face. He put his cup down and came to peer at my wound.

“You should have called me,” he said. “I could have helped you handle whatever did that to your face.”

I blew out a breath. “I have a lot to tell you, but first, I need to shift. I have to get rid of this wound.”

He nodded and stepped back, but before I could open the back door, Lucy rushed into the kitchen. “Kait! I went to your bedroom but you weren’t there. Joe woke me up on his way to bed. He seemed odd, even for Joe. Do you need—”

I turned to face her, and she gasped, then put her hands on her hips. “Sit down right now and let me look at that. I’m no doctor, but I’ve been taking care of you long enough to have picked up some skills. Sit.”

“Luce, I just need to shift. That’ll fix me up.”

She sighed. “Fine. I’ll just make some breakfast. Sausage, eggs, and biscuits?”

“Sounds good to me,” Zach said, giving her a wink when she looked at him.

She blushed. “Coming right up!”