Blood Promise (A SkinWalker Novel #4) (A DarkWorld SkinWalker Novel) (3 page)

Not on my watch.

I shifted my paws and threw my weight forward onto his neck. keen to provide him the same treatment he was meting out to Cassie.
 

Your turn, asshole.
 

The vamp-demon grunted, lifting his shoulder as if that small action would dislodge my claws. When I didn't move he rolled onto his back, lifted his knees and kicked his feet into my abdomen.

As prepared as I was for his reaction, the force of the blow still winded me. For all his scrawny appearance, he packed a wallop. I grunted, and it must have sounded too human for any kind of feline because he gave me an odd, worried glance.
 

Sounded human, huh?

Too bad. His new position gave me more claw to skin surface area than my previous angle had, and I took advantage of it. I pulled my razors free and then plunged them into the base of his throat. My paws thumped hard on his chest side by side, and I pressed with all my weight. I'd break his sternum. Stop his ugly heart. Rip into his throat deep enough to drown him in his own blood--

A bit on the vicious side, aren't you, Kai?

With his full attention on the basic need to survive, the demon's survival instinct finally kicked in. He dropped his hold on Cassie.
 

Part of my brain registered that she was no longer dying but coughing and gagging for breath, the ragged breathing and hollow coughing of my poor, near-suffocated partner.
 

But I didn't have time to celebrate. As I sucked in my own breath a shudder rippled through me. My gut twisted, as a red haze began to fill my vision fear gripped my throat. I might have saved Cassie but the bloodlust of the walker had finally come to claim me.

I'd danced around bloodlust since I'd shifted. It had been easy enough to avoid--until blood started to flow. Now that sweet, coppery scent began to entice my inner feline. Soon it would be a raging frenzy.

Usually the blood call forces the human-to-feline change. But because I was already in cat form, my visceral need was more powerful, a deep-throated bellow to my panther's wilder nature.

A call for the kill.

I strained against the call, the pull of pain in my teeth, the ache in my bones. I'd heard of this type of bloodlust. It went deeper than just being a walker. It was a more primal, unadulterated animal instinct that demanded dominance. I'd heard tales of walkers going over to the darker side, giving in to the primal need and never being able to come back to normality.

The walker could return to human form, but the bloodlust came home with her, and she'd have to spend the rest of her life fighting it. I didn't want that for my future. I had too many things to consider.

Too many people I cared about.

I stiffened my resolve. Tightened my jaw--

Cassie's fear filled my nostrils and her strangled cry brought me back to awareness.
 

I blinked.
 

My jaws were clamped tight around the vamp-demon's neck. Horrified, I spat him out, scrambling backward on my hind legs.

No. No.

One moment, I was a hulking black panther stricken by bloodlust. The next I was a very naked female, pale skin streaked with blood.

I
CHOKED
,
SHOCKED
AT
WHAT
I'd almost done.

Huddling on the wet ground, I watched as Cassie crawled to the demon and studied him, pressing a hand to her wounds. They trickled a thin stream of blood but I was sure she'd been through worse.

Paranormals were a tougher brand of human.

She looked up at me and shook her head, her pale-grey eyes wide and bright. "He's too far gone. He'll be dead in a minute or so."

I opened my mouth, then closed it, unsure what to say. And she understood.

She got to her feet, dabbing her neck with fingers before giving them an annoyed glance. Then she wiped her bloody hand on her equally bloody jeans, grabbed a fistful of clothes from my backpack, and threw them at me. I snatched them out of the air. "Put something on before he dies of shock instead."
 

I glanced down at him.
 

Death for a vamp-demon was always a slower process than for a human. This one's neck was a mess, and thick black blood seeped into the ground beside him, but he still seemed to be in control of some of his faculties. His eyes especially. Despite being moments from dead he studied me. Leered at my naked body.
 

Cassie snorted, searching the grass for something; probably her comms. "Or before he dies of something else." She grinned as she found the device and dusted it off before inserting it into her ear.

I shook my head, trying not to think about the anatomy of a vamp-demon, and proceeded to dress as fast as possible more concerned with the cold than the dying creature.

When I'd finished, I stepped closer to study him. I wasn't usually the morbid type but he was still conscious.

"You're her," he rasped, his voice rumbling.

"Her who?" I asked. I already knew what he'd meant. When he didn't respond, I said, "If you'd stopped when I told you to then you'd still be alive."

He shook his head, coughed, and splattered blackish blood all over my boots. "I know your type. Kill before asking questions."

"Not the way I operate. You didn't need to attack her." I pointed a thumb at Cassie who stood beside me, glaring at the reddened tips of her fingers as they continued to come away from her wounds bright and wet. She was taking longer than normal to heal and she didn't seem to be the patient type.

"She would have killed me."

"Damn straight I would have," Cassie snapped, colder than the night air.

He cocked a weak eyebrow. "See?"
 

"Cassie."

"Okay, well, if she had insisted I would have left you alive." Cassie shrugged, her expression a confused mashup of guilt and regret.

"See?" I repeated his word back at him and got a look of regret for my trouble.
 

Not that it helped. He was still going to die.

"Well, I'm on my way out, but you can still save him," the demon whispered, his voice still gritty but now a tad weaker.

"Save who?" I asked, leaning over him.
 

Cassie's grunt warned me not to get too close but it didn't matter. His eyes, blank and fixed, stared unseeing into the black sky.

"He's gone," said Cassie.

"No shit."
 

Cassie grabbed her rucksack and threw it over her shoulder. "What's with you?"

She pressed a white bandage to her neck and from the pink speckles it looked like her wound had finally stopped bleeding. Although Cassie was primarily a shape-changer, I knew, from spending a few days in her company, that the power to change form helped her to heal too.

"Nothing's with me," I snapped, reaching for my backpack. "He's dead."

"Yeah. He's dead. So maybe keep your distance before he goes poof in your face."

I grunted and turned on my heel. Vamp-demons didn't go poof, as she well knew. They merely disintegrated to ash and had to be dealt with using a good old broom.

I was about to tell her to take me home, when a low sound caught my ear. Tilting my head I glanced at Cassie, in silent question.

She narrowed her eyes and frowned as my ear shifted slowly from human to feline, its pointed end pricked to pick up even the merest hint of sound.

There, again.

I shifted around toward the sound, finding myself moving back in the direction of the hut.
 

It came again, low. Pained. Agonized.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I launched into a run. Cassie hurried down the hill at my side and we took the low wall like the trained agents we were.
 

Or rather, Cassie was a trained agent, I was merely house-broken.

We neared the hut and separated, Cassie pointing around to the side of the building. She'd enter through one of the empty window holes, while I crossed familiar territory, paying even closer attention this time around.

Outside, there had been a hollow note to the cry. When it quivered through the building this time my panther ear and my instinct told me to search below the floor.

I moved slowly along the floor, sweeping my foot left and right, shifting soil off the stone. Where would I find the entrance to a cellar in a place like this?

Moving into the second room I saw Cassie slipping over the empty sill. She closed in and we stood still waiting to hear the cry again. When it came--plaintive, mournful, and very loud--I shivered. So did Cassie.

The walls around us were bare, the rafters in full view, so again we were left with the floor. I began to stomp the surface of the dirty stone until something clanged beneath my weight. I toed the dirt away.

There under the soil-covered surface lay a thin square metal panel. Made to look like the stone of the floor, it blended into the surrounding rugged tiles aided by darkness and shadows.

In the daylight it would be harder to hide, but I assumed our demon hadn't cared. Considering the abandoned state of the property he wouldn't get many visitors.
 

I crouched in front of the panel and slipped a finger underneath it, before hiking a brow at Cassie.

She nodded.

I heaved the panel up and took few steps back in case we were peppered with gunfire. In case this was a trap.

But no bullets flew out of the black hole, only that pitiful sound again. Cassie dug around in her rucksack and retrieved a heavy-duty flashlight. She flicked the switch and white light flooded the coffin-sized space below.

A young man lay there, all protruding ribs, pointy elbows, and knobbly knees. He was curled in a fetal position, his matted hair almost dreadlocked, dark arms hiding his face, his gasps somewhere between relieved and terrified.

I touched Cass's hand and she aimed the light away, leaving just enough illumination to cast a soft glow into the burrow. I knelt at the edge, afraid to touch him in case he panicked.

"Are you okay?" I asked. Despite lowering my voice, I heard the sound echo within the room and inside the hollow dug-out.

Stupid question, Kai.

But it seemed to pull the boy from his panic and he shifted his hand from his face, revealing one very black eye.

And one very ravaged neck.

It didn't take a genius to figure out the kid had been turned.

Cassie sucked in a breath.

"Whatever you're thinking right now," I told her, "stop." I kept my attention securely on the boy, but my voice was hard and low, and meant business.

"Kai, it's protocol."

Protocol meant humans that were turned were considered a liability to be terminated at will. An archaic rule that I certainly didn't agree with.

"You know what you can do with your protocol."

Cassie snorted. "It's okay for you. You're not exactly 'on the books'."

"Just tell them I didn't give you a choice."

"And reveal to all and sundry that you have me by the brass ones?"

"They're brass?" I asked, a grin in my voice.

She clicked her tongue. "Just get him out of there before I change my mind."

I didn't respond, just sank to the floor and put one foot in the grave beside the shivering boy. His shoulders shuddered as I leaned forward and rested a hand on his bony arm.
 

I'd barely touched him before he sprang away, slamming his head into the back end of the box so hard that I could have sworn I heard something crack. Closer inspection of the tangled mop covering his head told me he'd live.

"I thought you said you were going to save him?" Cass peered into the hole. "Sounds like you're going to kill him anyway."

I gave her a blistering stare and returned my attention to the terrified boy. Up close, he had more than just dusky skin and deep black eyes going for him. Give him a few meals and a hot shower and he'd be positively cute. If a little dead.