I raised my eyes, looking away from the window when it didn’t yield the answers I needed. I hadn’t considered Lucas or Desmond, but now that Holden suggested it, it seemed like the most obvious answer.
My face flushed, and it didn’t escape Holden’s notice.
“That would make sense. ”
“Do you want me to come in with you?”
If it was either of my wolves, then having Holden with me would only serve to make things all the more complicated. The uneasiness of earlier this evening was still fresh in my mind, and I doubted the boys would have forgotten it either. I was also more than a little annoyed that they would invite themselves into my home, and I didn’t want Holden with me when I made that clear to whoever was inside.
“No. It’s got to be one of them, that makes the most sense. You can go. ”
“You’re sure?”
“Go and see Sig. We need to know what he thinks we should do and how we should act on it. I need to know if he still wants Peyton alive, given this new information. ”
Holden scoffed, and I knew he doubted the Tribunal’s opinion would change regardless of any new details, but being allowed to kill Peyton would go miles to help ease my mind.
“Tell me as soon as you know anything. Please. ”
He nodded and I closed the car door at last. In my lit apartment there was a whole other world of problems for me to deal with. I was starting to think I’d never find an end to my troubles.
It wasn’t until I was standing alone on the sidewalk, watching Holden’s car drive away, that I felt the full force of a body slam into me from behind and realized how right I was.
The blow was accompanied by snarling and snapping next to my ear that made my whole body go cold. I remembered being in the club yesterday with a man’s throat in my mouth, only then the animal noises had been coming from my throat instead of next to my head. It was a feral, distinctive sound, that of a hunter with prey only a bite away.
I was being immobilized by someone’s full weight, and they were trying to eat me.
I let out a howl that was less a horror-movie victim’s scream and more the noise of a wounded animal, but was the most natural utterance I could manage in the heat of panic. How could I have been stupid enough to let down my guard for a fraction of a second, knowing Peyton was in the city waiting for a chance to conclude our unfinished business?
“I thought you were so strong,” the mouth near my ear said.
The fact human words were coming out when the previous sounds had been so guttural was enough to snap me out of my internal chastising. As the voice and words sunk in, I put together that the speaker was young and female. Had one of Peyton’s new lackeys found me?
Using her new calmness as an opportunity to rear back, I smacked the back of my skull hard into the front of her face and knocked her off me wi
th the suddenness of the gesture. It never ceased to amaze me how people’s cockiness could lead to their undoing. Getting to my feet as quickly as possible, I spun and crouched in a fighting stance, preparing for her next attack. I was wishing, not for the first time that week, I hadn’t been forced to go without a weapon. As much as I’d have liked to be armed, there wasn’t any place to hide a gun when you were wearing an ensemble that barely hid your lady bits.
Recognition slammed into me with the force of a hammer when I saw the face of the young woman who had attacked me.
She looked almost exactly as she had when I’d sent her running from me in Central Park with her broken heel trailing behind her, only now a stream of blood was coming from her nose where I had broken it, and she no longer seemed afraid of me. The girl Mercedes said was named Brigit knelt close to the sidewalk, primed like a lethal predator waiting for her moment.
She was as pale as she’d been that night, but it wasn’t fear making her that way. Her new pallor was visible beneath the fake bronze of her skin. She was wearing a gauzy white summer dress that looked all wrong in the chill of spring.
Brigit was dead.
I knew from what Mercedes had told me I had saved her that night. She’d left Central Park alive and made it home in one piece.
So how was it she was now a baby vampire, staring at me with the clear objective of killing me when only a couple nights ago I had saved her from the monster she had now become?
It couldn’t be a coincidence.
All of these thoughts flooded my head in a matter of milliseconds. Before I had time to voice any of my questions out loud, Brigit sprung out of her crouch and hurled herself at me a second time.
She no longer had the element of surprise, though. Now she was not a clever stalker but an inexperienced killer launching an attack against a trained and lethal opponent. She would not best me again.
I grabbed a fistful of her hair when she got close enough and used it to yank her body to the ground, where it landed with a hard, fleshy crash. I knelt on her chest, using one hand to hold her head back. With the other I held her chin so she couldn’t try to bite me.
“Who was it, Brigit?”