for doing this for me.” Richard extended his hand to Kian.
“No problem.” He shook it and clapped him on the back. “I hope this time it works.”
“And if it doesn’t? Have you given any thought to letting me stay in the village as a human?”
“I have, but I don’t have an answer for you yet. Let’s wait a few days and see if my venom does the trick. If it doesn’t, we will revisit the issue.”
Richard nodded. “I’ll pray to the Fates. Maybe they will take pity on me.”
Kian put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe it’s not meant to be, and your fate awaits you in the human world.”
He shook his head. “My gut tells me that I belong here.”
The problem was that Kian’s gut was telling him the same thing, but that was neither here nor there. It was up to the Fates.
“I’m not going to repeat the ceremonial words. As far as I’m concerned, Bowen is still your initiator. Do you agree?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Let’s do it.” Kian clapped Richard on the back again, kicked his shoes off, and stepped onto the mat. “Come at me.”
Taking a deep breath, Richard released it slowly through his mouth, shook his arms out, and assumed a fighting stance.
“Good luck!” Jin started clapping, and soon the others joined her.
Uttering a battle cry, the guy came at Kian with unexpected force, but he was too slow for Kian’s quick reflexes. Kian spun out of the way, deflecting his kick with one of his own.
Richard was giving it all he had, which Kian appreciated. He also needed a good fight to awaken his aggression.
His pity for the guy was not conducive to a fighting mood, and for long moments it seemed like his venom glands and fangs were not going to respond.
Was he getting too old? Too soft?
What if he couldn’t get his fangs to elongate when he was fighting an actual enemy? What if they remained dormant when he needed to protect his wife and his daughter?
That thought was enough to ignite the fire under his primitive urges, and as his fangs punched out over his lower lip, Kian smiled, letting Richard know that playtime was over.
For the next couple of minutes, he let Richard believe that he still had a sporting chance. But his patience was running out.
It was time to end the game.
The next time Richard came at him, Kian twisted away, caught the guy around his waist, and slammed him down to the mat. A moment later, he sank his fangs into Richard’s neck and counted slowly to sixty.
“That’s enough,” Merlin said.
Kian retracted his fangs, licked the puncture wounds closed, and then listened to Richard’s heart. “He’s fine, Merlin. I wanted to ensure that this time he had an adequate dose.”
“I know. But I wasn’t sure if you knew when to stop.”
“I was counting.”
Ingrid sat on the mat next to Richard. “I’ll watch over him until he comes through.”
“Me too.” Jin sat next to her.
“Do you mind if I join you?” Wendy asked.
Jin patted the spot next to her on the mat. “The more the merrier for Richard. You know how much he loves attention.”
“I do.” Wendy sat down and crossed her legs. “He’s an attention hog, but I like him anyway. He was always nice to me, even when he thought that I was a bitch.”
44
Eleanor
By the time Eleanor was done with Simmons’s records, it was after four o’clock in the morning, and she could barely keep her eyes open.
She’d found five additional notebooks tucked under false bottoms of cardboard filing boxes, but she was too tired to start reading and too scared to stay any longer.
So far, she’d been lucky, and no one had shown up to stop her. The prudent thing to do was to leave and disappear, which meant that going home to sleep was not an option. She was going to pack a suitcase, head to the airport, and purchase a plane ticket on whatever outgoing flight she could find an available seat on.
The destination didn’t matter. Wherever she landed, she would check into a hotel room, read through the notebooks, and figure out where to go from there.
After checking that all the documents she’d scanned had copied to the flash drive, she pulled it out and tucked it inside her bag together with the six slim notebooks. Next, she wrote a thank-you note to Simmons’s widow, including instructions on how to access the files on the computer, taped it to the monitor’s screen, and let