"Please nothing," Leo said, "she's a vicious piranha. She looks all cute and cuddly, then she opens that mouth and lets loose so much venom she could double as a nest of scorpions."
Still Otto looked less than intimidated. "I think I can handle her."
Leo glanced over at Kyl. "Add a call in to the florist to send flowers to either his hospital room or funeral parlor."
Otto shook his head before he stood up. "It looks like we all have our marching orders. Should we reconvene later tonight?"
Leo nodded. "Eight thirty. Be here."
Susan got up to leave with the others only to have Leo pull her to a stop.
"I'll get a handbook from Patricia for you. You'll also be stuck here for a while."
"Okay." Her gaze dropped down to his hand where the tattoo was. "Do I have to get one of those, too?"
He snorted. "No." He flexed his hand. "These are used solely for Blood Rites."
"Is that like special ed?"
"Hardly."
She still couldn't believe it. Oddly enough, it was easier to buy into the vampires than it was to believe Leo could hurt anyone. "Uh-huh, you who calls me into your office to kill spiders because you're squeamish?"
"That's different," he said defensively. "Those are disgusting."
"And yet you expect me to believe you'd kill a human?"
His eyes turned dark and forbidding. "I took an oath a long time ago, Susan, and I will abide by it. Whatever it takes. What we deal with is bigger than spiders. It's bigger than you and me."
For the first time, she saw the man behind the teasing friend she'd known all these years. And in truth, she missed the old anal-retentive, smarmy boy she'd befriended in college.
"You know what I want, Leo?"
"Your life back."
She nodded. "I really need a do-over on this day. Then again, I could really use one for the last five years."
"I know." He gave her a gentle hug. "But it'll be okay, Sue. I promise. We take care of our own and you're here with us now. Don't worry. You're safe."
Stryker came to his feet as a rage so raw, so potent, went through him that he wasn't sure how he managed to maintain himself.
"Kontis did what?" he asked in a low, calm tone that belied his turbulent mood.
"He escaped us, my lord," the Apollite vet, Theo, explained as he stood cringing before Stryker's throne in Kalosis. Wearing a blue, blood-spattered lab coat, the half-Apollite should amuse him, but there was nothing amusing about the man's news.
Stryker met Satara's disgusted stare before he narrowed his eyes back on the worm who dared to deliver such news to him. "I told you, Theo, that you only had one thing to do. Keep him in a cage until I arrived."
Swallowing hard, Theo wrung his hands. "I know and I did just as you said. I swear it. I didn't take him out of the cage. Not once. We just wanted to have a little fun with him until your Spathis killed him." He glanced up with imploring eyes. "It was the human I work with who took him out while I was speaking to you on the phone earlier. By the time I found out about it, he was already gone."
Did the fool honestly think that by indicting a human as an accomplice he would get leniency? These stupid tools were getting dumber and dumber every year.
Stryker curled his lip. "Where is Kontis now?"
"He was taken home by another human. The other vet we killed said her name was Susan Michaels. We have a team of humans out, looking for the two of them now. "
Stryker ground his teeth as all of his dreams of easily grabbing Seattle as a home base came sliding down around him. By now Kontis had no doubt notified all the other Dark-Hunters in Seattle. Every one of them would now be on high alert. So much for the element of surprise. Their job would now be a thousand times harder.
He wanted blood for this. "Do you have any idea what this means, Theo?"