Page 32 of Silver Claw

I hadn’t decided if I’d tell anyone that Anika insisted she’d felt a demon inside me.

Joe and I avoided the subject entirely and focused on the city.

Jakeston never really slept. It simply changed. During the day, it was busy and noisy and filled with people working, rushing, living. During the night, it belonged to the monsters. Some of them were human.

Most of them were not.

I parked along the street in front of Scarlett’s, one of the clubs that belonged to the vampires. To the master, Bastien Martel.

Down the street from Scarlett’s was Mason’s, a biker bar full of supernaturals. There was a tunnel that led from Scarlett’s to Mason’s, and I knew that because I’d once dragged the detective through those tunnels while fighting—with Bastien—the two trolls who’d been created by Frederick Axton and posted there.

Fun times.

Joe and I stood side by side in front of my car, getting a feel for the night, the noises, and the people who hurried down the sidewalk, drove down the street, and lurked in the shadows.

The city was full of lights at night, as though they might push back the danger Jakeston was known for. They did not.

“It feels different,” I murmured.

Joe frowned. “Different how?”

“Expectant,” I said, finally. “It’s waiting for something.”

He shrugged. “Maybe you’re just projecting.”

Maybe I was.

Vampires were usually restrained, shadowy, and so still, sometimes, that a human would have trouble seeing them.

Maybe because he was rather new at vampiring, Joe was none of that. He practically vibrated with energy. “Let me kill Voss,” he said. “When we find him, let me have him. I can make it quick and he won’t have a chance to fuck with you again. I don’t care how much magic he has. I’ll rip off his head before he can lift a hand.”

I glowered. “Do you think I won’t be able to tear his fucking head off, Joe? Just because I’ve lost my magic?”

“Dammit, Kaity,” he growled. “Don’t ever start thinking I doubt you. It’s just…well, hell. I can’t eat. I have to take my pleasures where I can get them.”

I was still laughing when the master appeared abruptly in front of me, so seamless and dark it was like he was part of the night.

Joe would have known he was there before he appeared, of course. Just as I felt my alpha when he was near, Joe would feel the vampire who’d made him.

Ordinarily, Bastien would have kept Joe near him. He would have been the one to control him, teach him, master him.

But he knew Joe belonged with me. He’d turned Joe for me. And though he never said so, he was glad that one of his vampires had my back.

I’d saved Bastien’s life more than once. I’d given him back his precious Farrow when one of the council’s people was torturing her.

And the county master would do anything for me.

Bastien reached out to touch my arm, and I didn’t jerk away from him. We both knew I no longer hated him.

“Kait,” he said, and there was a tenderness in his eyes that I didn’t want to look at too hard. “Come inside. We can talk. Are you hungry?”

He knew one of the best ways to build a wolf’s strength after a fight was by feeding her. “I could eat,” I said, walking between him and Joe to the club.

There was a long line of people waiting to get inside, and not one of them yelled when we didn’t join them. Not even the humans would dare yell at Bastien. They might not know what he was, but they would sense his danger.

Noise and light spilled out onto the sidewalk when the huge bouncers opened the door for us. As usual, it took me a few seconds to adjust to the place once I walked in.

It was just so very loud and discordant. The strident voices of too many desperate people, thumps of soul-battering bass, music that made my ears hurt, and the overwhelming scents of blood and sweat and pain.