The Face of Scandal Read online

  Ginger Braids skidded on the jagged blacktop as she touched down, scraped palms leaving crimson smears in their wake.

  “Maybe I wasn’t clear the first time.” I didn’t bother raising my voice. Cracking my knuckles against my jaw was sufficient. “Get lost. Now.”

  Phil bolted first, patent leather shoes eating up the concrete. Ginger shrieked after him and slammed her fist into the pavement. She picked herself up comparatively slowly, one of her pigtails drooping over one ear. She was halfway out of the alleyway when she turned and hissed at me like a snake.

  I committed her face to memory.

  “Thanks,” a voice whispered haltingly behind me.

  I swiveled around. The human’s heartbeat might as well have been a marching band. It thudded like a summons. I took a step closer, hooked by his scent, and got my first good look at the so-called prize.

  He was taller than I’d first assumed. Taller than me, no doubt. A mop of black, shaggy hair hung in his eyes. He had a good face, the kind you’d imagine at home on a Roman coin. I pegged him at thirty-something. Maybe less. Guessing ages was becoming harder and harder the older I got.

  The werewolf sidestepped to block my view, squaring his shoulders as though he expected me to shove past. “I had it under control.”

  “Is that why I can scent fresh blood?”

  “No. That’s because you’re a leech.”

  Oh, great. A purist. I rolled my eyes. “Dial down the cheek. Your friend’s got the right idea. A little gratitude can work miracles.”

  Red Eyes wasn’t convinced. “All the miracle I need is for you to get the hell away from us.”

  “So eager to run into Phil’s buddies, are you?”

  “Aren’t you one of his buddies?”

  I mulled that over for the space of a syncopated, human heartbeat. “More like acquaintances. I keep him honest, he keeps me in business… Most of the time he plays by my rules—that is, when he’s not tempted off the straight and narrow.” I squinted at the werewolf. He looked familiar. “A better question is what do you think you’re doing bringing a human onto my turf?”

  “He didn’t bring me,” the human retorted. I had to hand it to him. He had guts to address me directly. “Lucan, it’s okay…”

  “No, it’s not. Stay back.”

  “I’ve heard of Salizar,” Lucan’s human pal insisted. “He—sorry, she’s supposed to police the quarter.” His striking blue eyes were like a pair of searchlights, tracking me.

  I nodded. I was the law, the executioner—hell, I was the nanny no one liked. My sobriquet commanded as much dread as it did bawdy jokes.

  “She’s a vampire,” Lucan shot back, though he relaxed his stance.

  Weird. I filed away the observation for later study. I was missing something. The lingering miasma of sandalwood wasn’t helping me think any clearer. “Who’re you?” I wound up asking, glancing from human to werewolf and back again.

  A beat passed. The wolf shifted before my eyes, his whiskers receding, claws and fangs retracting like switchblades. Lucan’s human face was all striking almond brown eyes and a mouth like an ellipse. He towered over me. Most men did, so that wasn’t anything to write home about, but I could’ve filled pages on the topic of his broad shoulders. Even human, homeboy was bursting out of his shirt with biceps like that.

  I would’ve happily overlooked the bloodstains to focus on that all-important detail, were I not distracted by a sudden flash of recognition.

  “Adam?”

  “Renée.” His retort was deadpan enough to confirm what I’d been dreading. He remembered me. Shit.

  “I thought her name was Claudia,” his friend murmured under his breath.

  I winced. “It is. Renée was—is—an alias I used a few years ago.” When I was still trawling through the badlands, picking up strays…like your buddy right here. Not one of my happier episodes, though as I recalled, the sex had been pretty amazing. “I liked you better as Adam,” I told Lucan, nudging him aside with a finger against his chest. “And you are?”

  Lucan’s human pal sucked in a breath as the distance between us narrowed to inches. He’d either encountered my kind before or his self-preservation instinct was alive and well, kicking in at long last. To his credit, he didn’t quail under my scrutiny despite an audible gulp that made me smile when I heard it.

  “Silver,” he breathed. “My name is Silver.”

  “Very emo.”

  “I didn’t pick it.” Silver flexed his hands. “I’m sorry, by the way.”

  “Phil knows I don’t tolerate that kind of behavior.”

  “No, I meant…” He flicked a glance to Lucan, then back to me. “I must smell weird to you.”

  “Understatement of the fucking century,” Lucan grunted.

  Silver flinched.

  I admit I was having a hard time not leaning in and running my tongue up his neck. He smelled edible, but I had a reputation to maintain. I’d spent five years becoming Claudia Salizar. I wasn’t willing to go back to being Renée, itinerant extraordinaire, blowing in and out of towns and trying to stay one step ahead of the local coven, pack—whoever it was that I would inevitably have to answer to. I was so sick of running.

  “What is it?” I asked instead, forcing myself to ignore the near-painful prick of fangs teasing at my gums. “Some sort of drug?”

  We had herbalists and occult aficionados in the quarter, yet our residents were werewolves or bloodsuckers first and foremost. The dabblers never went beyond summoning the odd swarm of locusts. True witches made their home south of our borders. We only mingled on market days, when their enforcers joined ours in ensuring no one dared color outside the lines.

  Silver shook his head warily. “A pheromone solution. An experiment.”

  “Human stuff,” Lucan added, folding his arms across his chest. I watched his arms cord and tried not to think about sinking my teeth into his flesh. I told myself it was Silver’s scent doing things to my brain. It wasn’t like I wanted to rehash that reckless night twelve years ago.

  No matter how hot he is or how many figure eights he can string together with his tongue…

  Corralling my thoughts into some semblance of order was proving difficult. I couldn’t very well take off and leave Silver to fend for himself. Lucan’s brawn wouldn’t hold out long against an elder pair—not when he was already bleeding. They would tear him apart.

  I made myself focus. “Why would humans turn one of their own into vampire catnip? Makes no sense…”

  “I wasn’t.” Silver drew his bottom lip between his teeth. I had a hard time glancing away. “A raid took out my settlement. I was captured.”

  Humans attacking humans. If it wasn’t a tale as old as time, I would’ve been surprised. “Your new masters decided to use you for a lab rat?” I grimaced, something like revulsion kindling in my gut.

  We’d heard stories. Rumors reached us through traders and lone wolves who bought passage through my turf in information because it was all they had left. But human affairs lay well outside my purview. The few times I’d caught their kind on my turf, I’d jettisoned them back to the borderlands, where they belonged. If they went quietly, I let them live. If they put up a fight, I responded in kind.

  And if they came looking to make trouble, they wound up neatly aligned at the foot of the arch, nicely seared.

  Their survival was not my concern. I had a hard enough time keeping the peace between Antwan’s pack and my coven. The likes of Phil didn’t make my life any easier.

  “We’re just passing through,” Silver went on, “if you could escort us to the south side, we’d be in your debt.”

  “I can.” The eastern boundary was closest. All I had to do was take them as far as the arch, spreading Silver’s scent all over town, and let animal nature take its course. Lucan wasn’t part of the local pack. His death—and he would probably die, I’d riled up the human contingent pretty bad with my latest headcount—need not weigh on my conscience.

  I
heaved an utterly unnecessary breath. “Sun’s coming up in a few hours. You’ll have an easier time of crossing the quarter without a hundred vampires in your way.”

  Lucan narrowed his eyes, dubious. “And what do you expect us do until then?”

  I tried to find some trace of the man who’d once fucked me inside the metal carcass of a Ferris wheel in his stern expression. There was none. He might as well have been a different person. “My place is a block away.”

  He let out a bark of laughter. “You’re dreaming, sweetheart.”

  “We’ll do it,” Silver cut in. He regarded me coolly, as though he couldn’t read Lucan’s indignation.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Lucan snarled. “She’s dangerous!”

  “I just saved your lives.” I pointed to the Phil-shaped dent in the nearby wall in case it wasn’t obvious. “You have my word I won’t hurt your friend. On the other hand, if you prefer taking your chances in the dead of night when the quarter is crawling with leeches…” I hitched my shoulders. “That’s on you, babe.”

  I turned on my heel and made to stalk off. It took everything I had to peel myself away from Silver. I hoped it didn’t show.

  Lucan’s sigh raised the smattering of hair on my arms.

  “Wait up. We’re coming with you.”

  I didn’t bother concealing a smile. Had I been a cat, I might have purred with delight.

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  About the Author

  Helena Maeve has always been globe trotter with a fondness for adventure, but only recently has she started putting to paper the many stories she’s collected in her excursions. When she isn’t writing erotic romance novels, she can usually be found in an airport or on a plane, furiously penning in her trusty little notebook.

  Email: [email protected]

  Helena loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.totallybound.com.

  Also by Helena Maeve

  A Touch of Spice

  Courting Treason

  Collision Course

  Misfit Hearts

  Eden’s Embers

  Flight Made Easy

  In the Presence of Mine Enemy

  Fault Lines

  Feint and Misdirection

  Glass Houses

  Surface Tension: Twice Upon a Blue Moon

  Surface Tension: A Smile as Sweet as Poison

  Wild Angels: Grounds for Divorce

  Wild After Dark: Beyond the Poison Chalice

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