Bane's Choice (Vampire Motorcycle Club #1) - Alyssa Day Page 0,32
ice.
“Fine,” he snarled. “Prepare to die.”
Chapter Fourteen
Edge tilted his head and took a mental inventory: beat all to hell, but still alive.
Good enough, then.
The Were staring at him must be Carter Reynolds, president and alpha of the Wolf Pack MC. Luckily, the man was acting like he might be reasonable, although that wasn’t what Edge expected from a werewolf.
He could feel his lips curling back from his teeth and forced his face into a neutral expression. Bane’s reaction to the dying human, and then Evans attacking Meara…it was no wonder Edge had been blindly racing away from the mansion on his bike.
He should have flown, but flying was dangerous. Sometimes, after all, humans did look up.
The silver net that had flown across the highway and knocked him off his bike had been powered by the stinking fuel of blood magic, and the warlock had laughed in his face before her thugs had knocked him out and transported him here. If the crash hadn’t beaten him up so badly, Edge could have easily overpowered or escaped the three men, but he hadn’t fed in a while, and his recuperative powers were at a low point.
The warlock must have put him in a temporary magical stasis spell, too, once they’d carried him inside the building and dumped him on the floor. With a final whisper that if he moved, he died, and a searing pain from a burning blast of magic, she’d disappeared just before the wolves entered the room.
But he’d been awake for her conversation with Reynolds, pulling up the alpha’s file in his eidetic memory.
Carter Reynolds: 32 years old, parents deceased, one sister living
Alpha, Savannah Wolf Pack MC, for 13 years
Reputation: Lethal
Second: Maxine Washington, goes by Max, female, 28 years old
Reputation: Also lethal
Pack status: 47 current members
Reynolds nodded at him again. “So, you said we need to talk. Talk.”
Edge glanced around the room, and Reynolds took the not-very-subtle hint.
“My people can be trusted. If they couldn’t, they wouldn’t be here.”
Edge shrugged, trying not to wince when one of his broken ribs protested the movement. “Fine. As you’ve seen, we’ve got warlocks. They want to kill us and take our territory.”
Reynolds’s eyes narrowed. He was a big man, thickly muscled and maybe six feet tall. He had very short hair, dark brown skin, and sharp brown eyes that missed nothing.
“I think you got that wrong, vampire. They want to kill you and take your territory, according to the lady. She gave you to us as a gift, in fact.”
Edge laughed, but there was nothing happy about the sound that came out of his throat. “That would be the worst fucking present of your life, wolf. And I said us, because I’ve never met a werewolf who’d be willing to roll over and show his belly to a warlock. Or do I have that wrong?”
The second, Max, still in wolf form, crouched and snarled at him, but Reynolds held up a hand. “Easy, Max. He’s an asshole, but he’s not wrong. There’s no way we’re letting blood magic users encroach on our territory. From what little I’ve heard of this Chamber, they’re seriously bad news.”
Edge snorted. “Calling the Chamber bad news is like calling a tornado a little bit of wind. They’re powerful practitioners with delusions of godhood, and they’ve sent at least one necromancer.”
Reynolds swore and jerked his chin toward a door in the rear of the room. “A necromancer. Fuck that. Let’s go into my office and chat. The rest of you, get busy. We need to find out more about these damn warlocks and what they want. Make sure all the families are protected. We may need to get them out of town. Move.”
They moved.
One thing you could say for a werewolf pack, after all: they followed chain of command.
At least until they didn’t, and somebody ripped the alpha’s throat out.
In the office, which was strictly utilitarian, with a couple of desks, each with its own computer, and a few filing cabinets, Reynolds pointed at a chair. “Sit. Want a beer?”
Before Edge could answer, Reynolds narrowed his eyes. “You’ll get nothing else to drink here.”
“I don’t drink wolf. You all taste like wet dog.”
Hot amber flared in the alpha’s eyes, but he just waited.
“Yeah,” Edge told him. “A beer would be fine.”
The wolf got a couple of Savannah Brown Ales out of a small refrigerator, opened them, and handed one to Edge.
“Never thought I’d be drinking beer with a vampire.”