Page 41 of Nexus
“I guess it’s lucky you licked all that blood off me,” I teased him when we climbed out of a manhole onto a street. “It gave you enough energy to outrun the shifters.” The glass of blood he’d ingested before we’d left the Den had helped far more than the snack he’d just gotten from me.
His lips pinched shut and he took off again without a word. The gators could easily follow our stinky trail, so I ran in his wake. My minion slowed his pace enough for me to keep up with him as he followed the street that ran alongside the river. I heard the roars of the weregators again just as we spotted his car.
With a final burst of speed, we reached the sedan and jumped inside it. Ruen took off with a squeal of tires. He made it all the way to the speed limit as we exited from the area. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone to follow our trail now that we were inside a vehicle, so I relaxed a bit. “What the hell happened to you back there?” I asked. “You went into some kind of weird trance.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said irritably. “We can’t visit Lord Gilden to get your payment while we’re in this disgusting state. I’ll take you to see him tomorrow night.”
“Your car is going to smell like crap for months,” I predicted in amusement, thankful that I could shower the stench away.
“I’ll have to have it cleaned with strong disinfectant,” the bloodsucker said in annoyance. “The smell will make my eyes water, but at least it will be preferable to excrement.”
His dour tone was enough to make me descend into snickers again.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT any conspiracies cropping up in the underworld?” I asked as casually as I could, once I had my amusement under control.
“There are always conspiracies in the nine realms. Are you talking about anything specific?”
“I heard a rumor that the overlords are planning to attack Nexus.”
He snorted out a laugh. “The gates are too heavily warded with magic for an army to come through them,” he told me. “How could they possibly invade our world in large numbers?”
I shrugged, feigning a lack of interest in the topic. “I heard something about an axis-gate and them being able to use it at will.”
His head whipped towards me and his gaze sharpened. “Where did you hear that?”
“At the Den a while ago,” I lied.
“Who did you hear it from?”
“I can’t remember. It was just someone in the crowd. Why? Is there really such a thing as an axis-gate?”
He pressed his lips together, clamming up again. It was obvious he’d heard of this secret gate and that he wasn’t going to tell me anything about it. My unease that my dream might have been more than just my imagination deepened.
“I left my car parked near the Den,” I said before Ruen could veer towards my apartment. “Could you drop me off at it?”
“I suppose so,” he said in annoyance, as if it was a huge inconvenience to him.
Directing him to where I’d left my orange hatchback, I climbed out and removed my weapons. He stayed in the car as I stashed my weapons in the trunk and retrieved my clean clothes and boots. The moment I slammed the trunk shut, he took off.
It was close to midnight on a weekday, so most of the humans had dispersed from the street. A few cars passed me, but none of the occupants saw me as I hid in the shadows. My raggedy clothes were ruined, so I stripped down to my undies and tossed them in a nearby dumpster. Clad only in my bra and thong, I climbed into my car to drive home.
It was a good thing I was proud of my body and my tattoos, because several of my neighbors joined me in the elevator before it could close. Pressing their backs against the wall, they kept their distance from me. Their eyes crawled all over my body, taking in my magnificence. I assumed they were stunned to silence until one of them spoke.
“Do you realize you smell like rats, reptiles, crap and blood?” All shifters, they could detect the scents that clung to me.
“I had to hunt down a bounty in Sector G,” I said as we reached the third floor.
“Did you wade through a pile of turds to get to him?” one of the others asked.
“Pretty much,” I confirmed glumly.
“I like your tatts,” the final guy said in admiration when we reached their floor and the door opened. “If you lost about sixty pounds, you’d be gorgeous.”
In response, I put my hand on his face and shoved him out through the door. Then I stabbed the button to make the door close again.
“What did I say?” he whined as it slid shut.