Free Blood and Destiny by Kaye Chambers Page B

got someone else you can take, I’ll bow out. Yasmine will skin me for a rug if I leave you to go alone.”
    He had a point. Standing up, I walked to the front door, expecting him to follow. He didn’t disappoint. I leaned against the doorway as he strode from my office to stand in the hallway.
    “Meet me here an hour early and wear something that doesn’t paint a target on your neck.” The words left my mouth before I had a chance to think about the consequences.
    He simply nodded as he stepped through the doorway. I closed the door behind him, doing my best not to notice or to care that he stood there listening to me lock the door and set the alarm. He was still standing on the sidewalk when I turned and walked to the back of the house to go upstairs.

Chapter Seven
    Somewhere between the shower to wash off the makeup and hair junk, and my closet for more serviceable clothes, my personality returned. With it came several interesting revelations. The first, and far from the most important, was that Luke had read the note and instantly known it was a hell.
    How could anyone associated with werewolves, who were about as straight-laced and conservative as they got, also be associated with vampire hells?
    My surprise visitor had to be the one who’d visited Betsy Vincent on the day she disappeared. The odds of having two vampires old enough to have mastered that particular skill were slim to none.
    I couldn’t even remember his face. It had seemed familiar. I knew that much, but not even his eye color sprang to mind. Eyes were my weakness. I was a sucker for a pair of pretty eyes.
    It sent a whole new shiver down my spine as I stood in my room made dark by blackout curtains.
    With some effort, I pushed the disturbing thoughts aside and managed to make a plan of action.
    Idleness didn’t go well with my current state of paranoia. I needed to be somewhere else if he decided he wanted to come back for another chat.

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    With that in mind, I moved to my closet and surveyed my clothes. I’m not a clotheshorse, so it wasn’t a large selection of options suitable for a stroll down to the seedier side of town. Worn jeans and a T-shirt with a bronze mock-turtleneck collar high enough to hide the marks from last night were about it. I didn’t want to get mugged, but I didn’t want to look like I was a regular either.
    Locking the door behind me, I trotted down the back stairs. Traffic was as atrocious as usual, but my mind was awhirl with the details from my case and that kept me occupied as I crept along toward the beaches. Slowly, traffic thinned until the streets were nearly empty and the buildings were covered in graffiti. Finding parking wasn’t a problem. The meter was broken, but I doubted any cops were patrolling down here.
    Locking the door seemed like a waste of time, but I did it anyway. It wasn’t like my Chevy was a prime catch. If a thief wanted it, my paltry alarm wouldn’t have been a deterrent. Since I wanted my hands free in case I needed them, the copies of the photos of Betsy and her mysterious lover were stashed in a messenger bag along with a sizeable cash donation for my source. I hurried onto the sidewalk and strode down it purposefully. If luck was on my side, my source was still spending his days in the alley beside the pastry shop.
    Even though I couldn’t see anyone in the shop windows, I felt people watching me as I walked away from my car. Stopping to look at a drum display in a pawnshop window, I used the reflection to observe the street behind me. A shaggy blond head peered around the corner of the alley. Diesel Dan was a junkie. Somewhere in his mind warped by addiction, he had decided he wanted to be anything but what he was. It had taken me weeks to convince him that he wouldn’t turn into a lion if I bit him. It had taken Kale to convince him that he couldn’t live in the alley by my building in hopes I’d