Embraced by Darkness(35)

The last remnants of the sunset were fading as I pulled to a halt outside our apartment. I climbed out of the car and breathed deep. The air was crisp and filled with the sharpness of oncoming rain. With my luck, it’d be absolutely bucketing down come cemetery time tonight.
Then another scent caught my interest—that of a wolf. A male wolf. It was a sour, almost unpleasant aroma, and certainly didn’t belong to anyone I was familiar with. I scanned the pavement, looking for the origin of the scent. A woman struggled along with bags of shopping clenched in each hand, her very human scent tangy and not unpleasant. Farther down, a somewhat disheveled-looking man sat on the front steps of a building and smoked something that looked hand-rolled. A joint, probably.
No sour-smelling wolves in sight.
I raised my nose, tasting the slight breeze again. The aroma of rotting rubbish, perfume, and the thick scent of humans rode the air. Underneath all that, the vaguest hint of death and decay—a vampire had passed this way recently, and his unwashed scent still stained the breeze. The sour smell seemed to be coming from my building. Maybe the old biddy who owned it had decided Rhoan and I had been such good tenants, she’d let another wolf in.
The thought stopped abruptly as a sharp sound snagged my interest and got my pulse racing.
The air seemed to scream, as if something fast and deadly was tearing through the dusk toward me.
Fear hit like a punch to the gut. I knew that sound. I’d heard it far too often now to mistake it. I threw myself sideways, but wasn’t fast enough by half. The bullet tore into my arm, right through the flesh of my underarm, then continued, smashing into the windshield and shattering it into a thousand different pieces. Glass flew, the glittering fragments raining around me as I hit the roadside. My chin struck hard, smashing my teeth into my lip, cutting flesh.
As the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth, another bullet tore through the air, punching a hole through the still-open car door and pinging off the road inches from my hip.
I swore softly. The bastard had to be up high. He had too good a sight on me to be anywhere near ground level. I scooted forward, my arm burning and bullets pinging around me. And they were all silver, because while ordinary bullet wounds hurt like blazes, they didn’t burn like this one was.
Which meant this bastard, whoever he was, knew I was a werewolf. Meaning it was no damn accident I was being shot at.
Could Blake be so angry about me not saving Adrienne he’d sent out a hit?Probably, but all the same I doubted he was behind the shots. Torment was more his style.
I stopped behind the rear tire and scanned the surrounding rooftops. I couldn’t see a goddamn thing…until a shadow moved on the top of the apartment building next to ours. It was moving, half-crouched, along the roof, probably searching for a better angle. But I’d be damned if I was going to let him get it. I scooted around the back of the car, and felt another bullet nip at my toes.
The bastard had found a better angle.
God, if only I’d had a weapon on me, I could have taken the shooter out when he’d moved. But I’d left my damn laser locked securely in the apartment safe this morning, just like I always did. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I’d have to risk running. I blew out a breath, then scrambled to my feet and ran like hell for the building. Bullets pinged against the pavement behind me, but their presence no longer burned. Perhaps he’d run out of silver ones.
But the mere fact that he was still sighting me when I was running as fast as I was physically able meant he had to be something other than human. To human—even wolf—eyes, I’d be nothing more than a blur. But a vamp could track me through infrared vision.
If it was a vamp up there, it’d have to be an older one, otherwise he couldn’t be out in the dusk. I slammed through the building’s front doors and ran up the stairs. This apartment block was almost identical to ours—a neglected old warehouse that had been converted to apartments and rented cheap to those who didn’t mind living near the freeway. Though this building, being on a corner and facing suburbia, had less inspiring scenery than ours. At least we could see the city and the bridges at night from our apartment.
And obviously there were no werewolves living here, either, because the high-pitched squeal of rats was evident as the little bastards went scampering at my approach. Like I was going to stop and eat one of them.
I continued to pound up the stairs. Six flights left me winded. The rooftop fire escape door was padlocked—which was totally against the rules, but often done in old buildings like these to stop the jumpers. We’d had a few jump from our roof, and it was never a pretty sight. Even a cat-shifter didn’t have much luck against that sort of drop.
After wiping the sweat from my forehead with a bloody hand, I stepped back and kicked open the door. It rebounded against the wall loud enough to wake the dead, but no welcoming bullet pinged into the opening. I blew out a breath, then dove through the opening, my back hitting the concrete hard before I was rolling to my feet and running for the nearest ventilation shaft. Again, no bullets.
Maybe he’d gone.
Maybe he was waiting for a clearer shot. 
I sniffed the air, trying to get some hint of who and what my adversary was. The air ran sharp with many aromas—including the metallic scent of my own blood—but there was no hint of vampire on the breeze.
I switched to infrared and scanned the rooftop. There was no one here. I was totally alone. I swore softly and rose. No bullets smashed through the air to greet my sudden appearance. My quarry was truly gone.
Cursing softly, I walked over to the corner of the building, going near, but not too near, the edge. At least a dozen shell casings littered the ground. Someone had wanted me very dead. Question was, who? And had they moved up from using cars and trucks to using bullets?
I suspected they had. But why? Certainly there was nothing happening in my private life that warranted such actions, so it had to be connected to a case.
Problem was, I only had two on my plate at the moment, and neither of those was a likely prospect. I mean, it wouldn’t be our evil soul, because he preferred more direct methods of destruction. I also doubted it would have anything to do with Adrienne’s case, because that was getting nowhere fast. And while Blake might be annoyed at my lack of results, I didn’t think he’d send hits out on me. Though I had no doubt he could have done so if he’d wanted to. He’d know the right people, if only because he was that type himself.
I left the casings lying where they were—not only because I didn’t have gloves but because I knew squat about guns and wouldn’t have been able to tell one casing from another—and followed the building’s edge, looking for a clue as to where my would-be assassin had gone. I wasn’t close enough to see the pavement directly below, and technically six flights shouldn’t have had my phobia rising, but the breeze whistling up and over the edge gave a feeling of greater height and my stomach twisted.
I reached the other end of the building. There was a small jump over an alleyway to the rooftop of my building, and someone had not only taken it at speed but had misjudged their landing. Several of the aerials were either bent out of shape or broken. The old cow of an owner would have a pink fit—she loved her TV above everything else.
After a quick glance down at the gap between the two buildings, I backed away from the edge and pressed the com-link button in my ear.
“Anyone home?”
“Oh joy, it’s the bitch,” a familiar voice said.
I smiled. “Hey, Sal, welcome back. I missed you.”
She snorted. “Yeah, I’m gone a whole twenty-four hours and you’re pining for me. Right. What can I do for you, wolf girl?”
“Someone’s just taken a potshot at me. With silver bullets.”
“So who’d you piss off this time?”
“No one that I know of.”
“I find that extremely hard to believe.”
So did I, actually. “He didn’t manage to kill me.”
“You do like stating the fucking obvious, don’t you?”
I grinned. “He did manage to put a whole heap of holes in your car.”
“Well, fuck him.”
“Yeah.” I took a breath then, with my heart racing a million miles an hour, ran at the edge, and leapt over. It wasn’t really a wide gap, no matter what my stupid fears were saying, and I landed on the other side without a problem. “The shooter was on the roof of the apartment next to mine. I’m currently on my rooftop and heading down.”
“Any evidence?”
“Shell casings. There might be prints.”
“I’ll send a team out.”
“Thanks, Sal.”
“You won’t be thanking me when you get the repair bill, wolf girl.”
I chuckled softly, clicked off the com-link, and walked around to the fire exit. The stair door was hanging off one hinge and swaying softly in the breeze. And what looked to be a footprint was neatly etched into the metal. My attacker was on the small side, if this print was any indication.I stood to one side of the doorway, studying the shadows and listening for anything out of place. The normal sounds and scents of living drifted up from the apartments below, but the air also held the slightest hint of staleness—the type of staleness I’d long associated with vampires. Though this wasn’t as bad as some.
My shooter had definitely been past here, but I doubted he was still hanging around. His scent was fading, and I couldn’t “feel” any other nonhuman in the immediate vicinity.