"Fang is an idiot," Riggs said. "And he shouldn't be talking to you about werewolf business. I'm going to keep you alive, and when this is over, I'm going to set you and your sister loose. The less you know about our kind when that happens, the better. And if Fang wants to keep his balls attached to his body, he'll remember that."
"Fang would be honored if Riggs touched his balls."
Riggs made one of his many sounds to signal his annoyance. This one was the heavy exhalation variety, but he followed it up with increasing his pace until I couldn't have kept up unless I wanted to embarrass myself by jogging after him.
Even with all the craziness of the last few hours, I was smiling.
I was smiling because for once, I was the one doing something, even if it was running for my life. Even if it was getting dragged along through a world I barely understood by a man who seemed to hate the world.
It was my adventure, for once, and it was my story.
But my excitement suddenly dropped out of my stomach when I shivered. I'd just been thinking it was a muggy, hot night half an hour ago, hadn't I?
Maisey was always watching me like a hawk, and she noticed. She moved beside me, then put her hand to my forehead. Her face was already paler than usual, but all the remaining color drained from it when she looked at me. "You're burning up."
"What?" Riggs asked. He and Gravy Boat had been leading the way, but he came back toward me then. He put his big hands on my cheeks, then touched my forehead. "She's sick?"
"No shit she's sick," Maisey said. "I told you about her immune system, but you've been dragging her around like you're trying to get her sick."
He was searching my face for some sign, like he thought I might start spouting projectile vomit at any moment. "How did you get sick so fast?" he asked.
I grinned. Now that I paid closer attention, I could feel I was a little woozy. "We all have our talents," I said, trying to force a smile. “To be fair, I did insist we go get Gravy Boat.”
Riggs didn't bother asking permission before he scooped me up and carried me in front of him. It was the classic "fireman rescuing someone from a fire" type of carry. He had one arm under my legs and the other holding my back so I was against his hard, oddly warm chest.
He started jogging at a rapid pace, despite having to lug me around with him.
The movement meant my hips and shoulder bumped into his stomach and chest with every step. To my increasingly sick, pathetically sexually deprived mind, it was about the most erotic thing I'd experienced since Fifty Shades of Grey. Or at least since he’d spit-shined my face outside the bar.
I blinked a few times, trying to clear my head. I was just getting loopy from my fever. I hadn't lived my whole life in a bubble to come out of it and start catching the hots for the first man to pay attention to me—especially considering this "man" only loosely qualified as a member of my own species.
No. The inter-species thing wasn't the big hurdle. The fact that he was rude, abrasive, and a jerkface was the biggest hurdle.
He wasn't the charming prince I'd always daydreamed about rescuing me from my germ-free castle. It was more like the hot pool guy asking if you wanted to sneak out and smoke a joint on the roof with him. Hardly a sparkling romantic fantasy.
So I needed to stop paying attention to how nice it felt to be held by him. I also needed to stop sneakily trying to take mental snapshots of the way his body felt against me and saving them for later. That was absolutely not smart.
Then again, it hardly mattered. Riggs the werewolf was about to get a front row seat to my condition. He'd see what kind of burden I was on everybody around me, and he'd run for the hills. Just like my dad had run from my mom in the end.
That, or the shadowy figures I saw following us on the rooftops would kill us first.
The loopiness was really settling in. I laughed, pointing to them. “Look!” I said. “Vampires!” I thought it was a hallucination, but Riggs' grip on me tightened as soon as he looked where I was pointing.
"Shit," he said.
12
Riggs
I couldn't tell how many were up there. All I knew was that we weren't alone. We hadn't been from the start, but the vamps on the rooftops hadn't made a move yet.
The pale fuckers were always slinking around on rooftops. These ones seemed to know my reputation because they hadn't made a move when we left The Wet Flea. They'd just followed. But I'd only sensed two or three before. Now I could see half a dozen, maybe more.
That, and now Sylvie couldn't move on her own. It'd be a lot harder to try to get away when I had to carry her.
We were close, though. Maybe another minute of jogging and we'd be there, but I could tell Maisey was struggling to keep up. She'd looked fit, but something was wrong with the human. She seemed to only notice Sylvie's condition, but I'd been picking up something with the older sister, too. It was hard to tell exactly what was wrong with her because she still reeked of vampire. I guessed some blood had gotten its way under her clothes. Thankfully, it was probably subtle enough that the howlers wouldn’t notice and cause trouble for us.
They were both a fucking mess, and I was the idiot who had decided to rope myself into their problems.
Dumbass.
"Carry the angry one," I called over my shoulder to Fang.
"He's asking me for help!" Fang shouted. "You got it, Captain Riggs."
"Don't call me that," I shouted.
I heard a brief yelp of surprise and indignance, then confirmed that Fang had Maisey over his shoulder, ass up. Gravy Boat was easily keeping up with me—unfortunately.
We were just about to reach The Wet Flea when a lone figure dropped from the darkness to land in the street in front of us. He was tall and thin, with silver hair and a cocky, arrogant resting face.
"Lazarus," I said.
"Riggs," he replied, mouth twisting around my name. “We meet again.”
“You’re not on neutral ground this time, asshole. Either get out of my way, or this will be the last time we meet.”
"I was delighted when I found out you were the werewolf who decided to meddle. But I'm prepared to make you an offer. Walk away now and hand us the girls. Do this, and I'll consider our conflict resolved. Continue to resist, and... well." He spread his hands, as if to say, "rules are rules."
I met his icy blue eyes. "Fuck you."
Lazarus smiled, but it didn't touch the rest of his face. "I was hoping you would say that. But I do have to ask. Why these women? What are they to you?"
"The enemy of my enemy, or some shit like that.”
He stared at me with a look on his face I didn't like. Then he angled his chin down, narrowing his eyes at me as amusement twinkled in them. "You don't know, do you?"
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn't see the advantage in admitting that. "I know all I need to know."
"Yeah," Fang said, a little too loudly. "And Riggs will fuck you up if you don't get out of our way. Any friends you brought, too. He'll fuck them up. Then he'll piss on their corpses!"