Page 58 of Vampire Lee

Mars didn’t drive to the garage. Instead, he parked right outside the entrance and got out of the car. Devin and Dillon followed. Hanna, Rei, and Murrie were in the kitchen, the tension thick enough to cut.

“Vampire and a bear.” Mars pulled out a chair and sat.

“Same as in the apartment?” Hanna’s eyes were wrong. It took Dillon a second to realize they were her wolf eyes. He’d never seen her shift anything before. Murrie’s eyes could shift, and Rei regularly turned into a jaguar in the backyard, and his eyes shifted if he got annoyed by something. Dillon wasn’t sure about Faelan. He most often moved around the house like a shadow, but sometimes, he had a wilder feel to him. Though, Dillon hadn’t spent enough time with any of them to know what their state of normalcy was.

“I’m almost certain.”

Hanna jumped to her feet. “Shit, you’re bleeding.” She headed toward Dillon a little too fast for his liking, but he stood his ground.

“It’s okay. Lee sealed it or tried to at least before they hauled him off.”

“Anything else?” Murrie looked as if he’d grown at least three inches if not more. Shit, had he? Maybe he was about to shift.

Dillon took a deep breath. “The vampire. I don’t know his name, but he came by the underground mansion from time to time.”

Mars snarled and hugged Devin to him. Everyone else stared at Dillon.

“But it’s not about an underground mansion?” Rei had cat eyes but appeared the calmest of them. Calm might be the wrong word, he looked as if he’d kill anyone who got too close, but he didn’t have the frantic feel to him the others did.

“No.” Dillon dragged it out. “I don’t think so. They wanted Lee, not me. And they want you.”

“They’ll be able to tell Lee doesn’t smell of me.”

“Maybe they won’t care.” Hanna looked between them.

“I think he…” Dillon scrunched his nose. “He smeared my blood on him. When he licked at my throat, he ran his hands over where it had spilled—”

“How much did you bleed?” Murrie’s teeth looked sharper now, and Dillon shuddered.

“The bear had these long claws, and he jammed them at my throat. Not through obviously, but…” Dillon raised his hand to his throat and gently ran his fingers over the necklace of five puncture wounds.

“Do you need to go to the hospital?”

“No. It’s not…They wanted Lee. I was in their way.”

“So now we wait for them to contact us?” Hanna cracked her neck and clenched her fists.

“Yeah.” Murrie reached for his phone. “I’ll see if Faelan can talk.” Then he left the room.

“Does Lee have any used clothes here?” Rei caught and held Dillon’s gaze.

“Yeah, I think there are some upstairs.”

Rei nodded. “I’ll go put on a shirt or something, so I smell of him.”

Dillon shrugged. He didn’t care about Lee’s clothes, and he wondered if anyone would care about scents at all, but he wasn’t the expert here.

* * * *

Lee looked around the different cages and wanted to scream. How had he believed getting involved in this shit would be a good idea? He should’ve turned a blind eye, and pretended he hadn’t heard anything.

The vampire, who he’d come to hate with a passion on the ride over here, shoved him toward a cage. There was already someone in there, looking more or less out of it.

“Don’t kill him.” The vampire pushed him the last few steps into the cage and closed and locked the door behind him. Lee glared at him. He’d taken his phone and had taunted him both about Rei and Dillon the entire car ride.

He believed he’d hidden his reaction when he told him about what he’d done to Dillon pretty well, but the vampire had laughed at him, so maybe not. At least, he believed he’d managed to conceal they were lovers, if that was what they were. Damn.

When the steps of the vampire died away, he focused on the person he was sharing a cage with. Another vampire, but there was something…He was starved and covered in scars. In general, vampires healed fast enough for there not to be scars, though judging by how thin he was, Lee suspected he didn’t get enough nutrition to heal.

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