More often than not he gave Nix a hard time, but he’d always had a healthy respect for her skills. Skills that were now enhanced by virtue of her being half vampire. “I won’t let anything happen to him,” he said, hoping he could keep his promise.
He lifted a hand in farewell and left the house. When he climbed onto his bike, he caught movement from the corner of his eye from the house next to the one he was parked in front of. He paused, leaning over his bike as if he were checking something, and reached out with his senses. He couldn’t hear anything beyond normal night sounds, and when he tapped into his chameleon abilities and took on the olfactory senses of a werewolf, he couldn’t smell much of anything beyond the gasoline in his bike and the rubber and asphalt smell of the road. Except…
There was something vaguely feline in the air. Maybe Liuz had sent someone to tail him, to make sure he got the job done? All they would know at this point was that he’d gone to his father’s house, and that Nix had been there. Which could be explained away as a family thing he couldn’t get out of. For now, he wanted to see who was spying on him, and why.
He got off the bike and stood looking at it, giving whoever was hiding in the bushes time to relax. Then with a low grunt he turned and sprinted toward the house. He heard the bushes rustle as the other person tried to get away from him, but Finn was fast. Even faster when he took on the aspects of a catshifter himself.
Damn it. His shadow must have shifted, because the feline smell was stronger now. Finn chased him around several hedgerows before he was able to dive down and grab—
A cat. A damned ordinary orange tabby who hung in his grasp like a spitting furball of fury. Even with shapeshifters the laws of nature applied. A two-hundred-pound man could not downsize himself into a twenty-pound cat, no matter how hard he tried. Some mass could be lost or even expanded upon, but not that much. Catshifters were always big cats—lions, tigers, pumas, and the sort.
The tabby landed a lucky swipe of claws across Finn’s inner forearm. He muttered an oath and dropped the cat, who growled and then hissed at him one last time and darted away.
Finn walked back to his bike and drove home, wincing as the scratches on his forearm tensed and pulled with the use of the hand gears. He’d never been fond of cats, and this solidified his dislike. Damned felines.
Once at home, he cleaned the scratch marks on his arm, though they were already healing. He wolfed down a couple of PB&Js, then geared up. He cleaned his seldom-used Glock and placed it in the holster. Clipping it to his belt, he moved on to his scabbard holding his short sword. It snuggled between his shoulder blades, the handle just where he could reach behind his neck to grab it. He tucked two wooden stakes into the inside pocket of his leather jacket. One final piece of equipment—a pair of pliers—and he was set. He sat down to wait.
Within an hour he received his text from Nix. Showtime.
Finn drove to Caine’s house, fairly certain this time that he was being followed. His every turn was matched by a black sedan traveling a few cars behind.
The walkway to the house was well lit, making picking the lock on the front door like child’s play. As he let himself into the darkened house he noticed all the curtains were drawn closed. He hesitated, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness. A dead vamp, a silent pale slab in front of the sofa like a morbid coffee table, lay on the living room floor. While Tobias and Nix stood without moving in a corner of the living room, Finn went about making it look like a struggle had taken place. He knocked over a lamp and shoved the sofa across the room. Then he slammed one of the wooden stakes through the vamp’s heart.
He pulled the sharpened wood right back out again. “Do something with that,” he said in a low voice, and held out the stake to Nix. Bits of tissue and congealed blood clung to the wood. She came forward and took the stake with two fingers and a