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their food chain if that happened. Now I owe the asshole."
"No you don't. You don't owe him jack. He was picking your brain and only got
as much from you as you knew. That's why I hate those vampire SOBs. Slimy. If
he told you a name, a chain of command, something you didn't know, then I'd
say, yeah, you owe him. We've got solid leads we know Guillaume and Dexter
went rogue. Like they told me, somebody tore off the general's face, and stole
Rod's tainted blood and replaced it that means, like Holland told you earlier,
there's an internal leak. Right now, we don't know who's the puppet master&
but guaranteed, that vampire who approached you was gathering intel so they
can do a hit. They're not big on Western due process." Max leaned forward and
hunched over his beer, surly now.
She rubbed her palms down her face, hating to admit that his assessment was
probably right. It was the jealous male thing that had made her check him.
"I'm exhausted. That has to be it. I should have seen that clear as day."
"You're a free agent, you can see it or not. It's not my business, I suppose."
He slid off his stool and stood.
She held his arm. "All right. Maybe I took it "
"It's cool," he said, yanking away. He glanced at her hand. "No ring, no
permanent bond. Fuck the shadow culture, right?"
She closed her eyes with a groan and dug her fingers into her hair as she
leaned over her beer. "No. Just a battle-weary woman who is not used to being
told what to do and who will never get used to that& but who has honor." She
glanced up at him. "I have more class than to screw some stray vampire for
some intel, and the fact that you said something to me really pissed me off."
She sat back and took an angry sip of her beer. "But you always gotta look at
things from the side of the person doing the accusing." She glanced up at him.
"Would you have done it if a stray vamp female sporting a pair of double-D
jugs blew in your ear with some info? Should I have come up to you and said,
down, boy mine?"
He looked away, jaw pulsing, but she noticed he hadn't moved. "It's not like
that& I "
"I what!" She set her beer down hard, sloshing the dark brown fluid out of her
glass. "Either you trust me as your partner on every level or you don't. Tell
me right fucking now, or I'm out. I'm not going through this every time we
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have to "
"Listen," he said, leaning forward to speak to her more privately. "What say
we get lost until we get eight good hours of sleep? Eat. Replenish. We can't
do a thing while we're both about to drop where we stand. Fatigue will make
anyone edgy, all right? I'm sorry."
She looked at him hard and then looked away.
"I'm tired, you're tired& and I almost lost you behind a demon door so, yeah,
seeing you cozy up to one of the most dangerous breed of entities shook me for
a minute. There. You satisfied?"
Sasha began fastening her leather bomber jacket without looking at him, but
despite her resolve to remain pissed off, she felt that emotion slowly ebbing.
"I'm beat, need to go lie down, curl up somewhere warm and sleep off the
adrenaline rush."
"You're seducing me," she said, unable to stifle a yawn.
"I was just on my cell with the home pack," he said in a weary tone as though
sudden fatigue from their argument had drained the last of his energy. "I'll
fill you in about what happened to the general on the way while we find
somewhere to hole up for the night somewhere nice. And you're safe. I swear
all I can do is sleep." woods woke up and struggled against his binds, trying
to sit up. Fisher coughed and then began bucking his body, fighting to get
free.
"Whoa, whoa, easy, gentlemen," Crow Shadow said, a spill of black hair falling
across his face in a curtain as he cut a piece of wild ram off the fire spit.
A large man stood slowly, thick and tall, his motions lumbering as he picked
up two canteens. He poured some water into his mouth first to demonstrate it
wasn't tainted.
"I'm going to cut you loose," Bear Shadow said calmly, flashing a huge hunting
knife with a smile. "You can stretch, take a leak, eat, and drink. But if you
run, you're dead men. You cannot give away our position. Understand?"
"What do you want from us?" Fisher said, drawing back from Bear Shadow's
knife.
"Oh, Great Spirit we don't want that from you." Bear Shadow shook his head.
Crow Shadow sighed. "You ought to have some appreciation. It's not like you
woke up in Mexico in a tub of ice and cold water without kidneys or something.
We're not body parts salesmen, we're not sexual predators, we're not bounty
hunters for humans, and we're not werewolves. It's minus seventeen outside and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]