She should have known. Burke had warned her that sometimes blood wasn’t the only thing Kyn wanted while feeding on a mortal, especially if there was any kind of physical contact. He hadn’t mentioned how badly the tresora would want it, though, and maybe that had been on purpose, to keep her from finding out.
She didn’t regret being intimate with Jamys. How could she? He’d made her light up like Las Vegas, and after that horrible nightmare of being trapped in that tomb, she’d needed it. Her only real regret was that she hadn’t done much for him in return—but secretly she’d loved that, too. How many women could honestly say that they got their guy off with a single touch?
Chris parked outside her final stop, a community blood bank that was one of many owned by the tresoran council. All she had to do was show her jardin identification at the desk and they’d bring her a large cooler stocked with fresh units. Two coolers, if she wanted that much. She had no reason to feel guilty about getting it.
I can’t go on feeding him myself every day, and it’s too dangerous for him to hunt. This is the only alternative.
At the desk inside a smiling young woman greeted her, and then inclined her head in the public shorthand for a bow as soon as Chris placed her ID on the counter. “Will your lord be coming to Miami tonight, Miss Lang?”
“No, this is for a visitor.” She had decided against mentioning Jamys’s name; she had no idea if it might get back to Lucan. “I’ll need a two-week supply of stores. Also, if you have one, a nine and a couple of clips.”
The girl nodded. “Right away.”
As she waited by the counter, she looked over at the people waiting in the lobby. All of them were mortal, and she was pretty sure two of the men in suits were tresori. With their backs to the walls, the pricey but discreet style of their clothes, and the clean-cut hair, they gave off that sort of official vibe. Both seemed to be ignoring her in favor of the magazines they were reading, which seemed a little odd. Tresori always checked out everything around them; their training instilled a kind of professional paranoia that became almost second nature. That was exactly why she’d taken a hard look at the people in the lobby.
One of the men seemed engrossed in the latest issue of People, while the other was thumbing through a copy of Time. The only problem with the second guy was that the mag in his hands was upside-down.
Maybe he’s dyslexic, Chris thought as she wandered down the counter, pretending to check out the literature while getting in better position for a closer look. Out of the corner of her eye she saw both men shift subtly in response. Nope, they are watching me.
One of the men rechecked her position by bending down to untie and retie his shoe. As he did, his jacket sleeve slid back to reveal part of his forearm and half of a black cameo tattoo, the center of which should have contained the profile of the man’s Kyn lord, but was instead covered in scar tissue.
Chris, who had never seen a tresora with partially mutilated ink, had to force herself to read the front of the pamphlet she wasn’t reading.
Tresori assigned to guard the blood bank would have been stationed at the entry points to the building; watchers wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be seen at all. Chris wandered back to check the number of names that hadn’t been crossed off the sign-in sheet, which was seven; she’d counted nine people waiting in the lobby.
More than anything, the man’s scarred tattoo frightened her. She’d never seen anything like it. And why would a tresora hack out of his own flesh the face of his Kyn lord?
Chris waited until she saw the receptionist emerge with the cooler from a back room. Chris vaulted over the counter and ran to the girl, whose eyes went wide.
“Side door?” When the girl gestured, Chris took the cooler and smiled. “Thanks. And the nine?”
“In the cooler.”
She ran for the exit, bolting through it and sprinting for the rental car. She had enough time to get in and drop the cooler on the seat before she saw the two tresori run around from the front of the building. She ducked down and slipped the keys in the ignition as they trotted past her, both looking in every direction before they hurried to a big black cargo van.
As soon as they’d climbed inside the van, Chris started the Lexus, reversed out of her space, and sped out of the lot. They were good, she thought when she saw the van appear in her rearview. She floored the accelerator as she scanned the road ahead for an intersection with some cover, and once she reached one with a green light, she coasted to a stop and turned on her emergency flashers before she reached into the cooler.
Chris left the engine running as she got out of the car, raised the hood, and waited in front of it, watching for the van. It slowed as it approached, and then as she’d hoped, it stopped behind her rental.