Chapter 1
Put her down now before she wakes and eats our faces off.
Those words hit me like a bullet to the brain. Before I could register the decision, I hauled myself to my feet. Every cell in my body screamed in agony, arguing that the cold concrete floor was good, excellent in fact—anything to ease the fire in my blood from the lycan’s scratch. I needed a cool plunge pool somewhere tropical, an ice-cold drink, and to become a yeti, not necessarily in that order.
None of those things were likely to happen in the immediate future (well, the yeti might be a possibility. I’ve never met one. Perhaps it’s like the werewolf thing… one bite then you go furry and drop off the grid permanently?) so I ran, tumbling into the Shade so my murderous human companions couldn’t see me. And, more importantly, shoot me.
A fucktard lycan had already tried to show me what my guts looked like, which meant I was infected. And the last thing I needed while fighting a lycan infection was a bullet through the brain. I wasn’t worried that it would kill me. It wouldn’t. I’d been shot before. That time it had only been through the heart, but it still hurt like a fucking bitch. But I really didn’t want to experience having my brains on the outside of my skull. No way. No how.
Although, with the way my grim was screaming at me inside my skull, I might have considered some ventilation if it would get rid of the noisy fucker. It’s like a hotline to reaper central, the source of a reaper’s ‘otherness’, and right now, mine was bossier than the bastard lovechild of a marine drill sergeant and an ambitious soccer-mom.
I didn’t blame it, though. I wasn’t at my best, not with the lycan infection trying to take over my body, which meant the two cops on my tail had a better than average chance of putting some serious hurt on me. Not kill me, no mortal can do that, but that was a whole level of pain I didn’t want to experience right now. Or ever. That one of the cops gunning for me was Troy—yeah, I’m not even going there without either a case of vodka or a therapist on hand. Or a case of vodka for us both... If a therapist got inside my head, they would need a three-day bender and some professional help of their own.
My bike had gotten over whatever snit it had been in and was waiting for me outside the factory. I staggered over to it, and it growled as I flopped over it. The road and surrounding buildings swam in and out of focus. I giggled as I looked down at the asphalt.
“Oh look… tiny little ants.” I reached a hand down, but the bike snarled, bringing me back to myself. The sound of Troy’s voice jerked me upright, and somehow I threw my leg over the saddle. The bike roared to life, Troy’s car appearing in my peripheral vision for a moment, but then it was gone, and the wind slapped me in the face until I hunkered down.
The ride back was patchy. Fading in and out, I only got snapshots of the town until I found myself outside the motel room door.
Grim autopilot is a beautiful fucking thing. It’s freaky as fuck the first time it happens, and you discover that your body is not your own, but it’s saved my life on more than one occasion. Remind me to tell you about the wyvern and the… yeah, that’s a story for another time.
The patchiness continued. I got flashes of the room, the bathroom, then the ice-filled bath a second before I plunged into it.
“Whatthefuckinghell!” I hissed as every cell in my body became an icicle. A Reaper icicle... A reapcicle? I shivered, still cursing through chattering teeth, and then registered the bottle of cheap whiskey in my hand.
“Well helllllllooo gorgeous...” I murmured and twisted the cap off. Three healthy swallows of fire made their way down my throat. My Grimm might be an utter pain in the ass, but it knew what to do about a lycan bite. How? Let’s just say this ain’t my first rodeo.
There are two ways to deal with a lycan infection. The first is to find and kill the beast that turned you. It’s sketchy and you have to make sure not to have turned furry between being bitten and killing the bastard that nailed you. You pop any fur, and you’re screwed. Lycan-city for the rest of your life.
The other and best way to deal with a rampant lycan infection was to be a Reaper. Being bitten didn’t turn us into ravening beasts with a hair problem no number of pink razors would deal with. Instead, it gave us a raging temperature and full-on, tear-your-bones-out body aches as the infection fought with a body that was technically dead.
Since it ain’t gonna win, the only thing to do is try and bring your temperature down and throw as much alcohol down your throat as you could. Since drugs? Yeah, they don’t work so well in a Reaper body. Not even the good stuff. For good reason. Would you want something with no natural predators running around stoned off its tits?
I shivered in my ice-bath and tried to pretend it was a sauna. I wasn’t surrounded by fucking ice, drinking cheap-ass whiskey. I was in a hot tub with a mojito instead. Awesome. No, not really. My teeth were chattering so hard I thought they’d break off, and my nipples were like fucking bullets. The girls were not happy, let me tell you.
My entire body shook as I slid lower in the water, sloshing ice water over the edge of the bath. It felt warm now, verging on hot, and the shivering stopped. For a human, that is a Bad Sign (capitals intended). That meant hypothermia and the need for immediate medical attention or death was imminent.
I sighed and dunked my head under the water. My ears, the only part of me that registered the correct temperature anymore, protested, but I ignored them and closed my eyes. It wouldn’t be long now. When my body goes through this kind of shit, it shuts down. Like it was doing a factory reset. I wish it would do something about those few extra pounds from Christmas while it was at it.
My vision greyed at the edges right at the moment Troy kicked my bathroom door in. I locked gazes for him for a second.
“Oh bollocks.”
Then everything went black.
Troy froze with the gun clasped against his chest and looked at John in horror.
“What do you mean, kill her? Did you miss the fact she just saved your life?
John gave him a stern look and motioned to the carnage around them. “Did you miss the homicidal bunch of werewolves ready to make snacks of the entire fucking town?”
He didn’t need to look. The massacre around them--the blood-stained walls, and the bodies lying broken and naked on the floor--were burned into his brain for all time. He’d seen some shit working in homicide in the big city, but this was something else.
This entire year was something else. He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. He’d never thought he’d say it, but he missed the monsters he’d had to deal with before. At least they’d been human. Even if he didn’t understand them, he could at least predict them.
This lot? Not so much…
“She’s one of them.” John’s voice was hard, his expression harder. But Troy knew him. Under the hard nose attitude, buried deep in his eyes, there was concern. For Troy. His voice dropped the hard edge as he reached out to clasp Troy’s arm, his grip firm as he squeezed. “If you let her turn, if you let her run riot, then there’s going to be way more bodies than in here. And do you want to face the Captain and explain all that shit to him?”
“I can’t. It’s Laney. How can I kill her?” He didn’t bother to keep the torture out of his voice. John’s expression softened, and he squeezed Troy’s arm again.