Free Ravenous by V.K. Forrest

touched. As crazy as it sounded, even in her head, it was as if he could reach her soul.
    Good kisser aside, what had possessed her to make him her knight in shining armor? Again? The first time, she had called him on impulse. But today, it hadn’t been impulse. She’d hung up the phone after the death threat, thought about it, and decided not to call the police, but to call him.
    What made her think she could trust him?
    She just knew . It was something in his sad, dark eyes. She had seen right through his tough exterior the day she met him in his antiques shop. He played a good enough game, but not good enough to fool her. He had a good heart and somehow, from the moment she met him, she had known he was the kind of guy you could depend on. No matter what.
    So if he was such a good guy, why would she put his life in danger?

Chapter 7
    L iam stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets as he walked down the sidewalk midday on Friday. The rain had stopped around two in the morning. He’d awakened around then, breathing hard, covered in sweat. Despite the bright sun shining on his face, he felt chilled, even now, as he remembered the dream. Or maybe relived the moment. After a while, it was all the same.
    That night in Paris, he’d fluttered on the wings of a raven between the bars, through the open window, into an outer hallway of the Gaudet palais . With no one in sight, he had returned to his human form. His mind worked at its best, at his quickest, when he was human. His human thought processes were still accessible when he was an animal, but he also had to deal with all the instincts, fears, and desires of that animal, which made situations more complicated. He needed no complications that night.
    The tiled hall had been stacked with boxes, confirming his intelligence reports from spies, hired by the sept, to infiltrate the suspects’ home, business, lives. The Gaudet brothers were going out of town, which was the reason he’d decided to pay a visit tonight, without sept final approval for the kill. He understood the need for bureaucracy, even among vampires, but sometimes the wheels of bureaucracy turned too damned slow, which was exactly how these men had avoided arrest and prosecution by the authorities all these years. If he let another day go by, Liam was afraid the murdering pedophiles would slip out of his hands and into hiding. The downside of going in without the sept’s blessing, besides risking being tossed off the Kill Team, was the danger of having to go in alone. But he refused to put his fellow team members at risk of being punished alongside him. It was kind of the definition of going rogue, wasn’t it?
    But alone in the hall that night, he’d had second thoughts. What if something went wrong? What if he was able to capture only one brother and not the other? Surely they had a plan for a breach of security on the scale he was about to create; he had known these kinds of men long enough to know there were always backup plans.
    The children would be slaughtered.
    Witnesses were never a good idea. Especially victims of sexual abuse. Which meant Liam couldn’t fail.
    It was at that point, as he crept down the hall in the darkness, that his anger had begun to build. There was never room for anger in the workplace, but with his job, it was crucial that he remain emotionally removed. If Liam had any regrets about what he did that night—which he kept telling himself he didn’t—but if he did, that’s where they began.
    He remembered tightening his jaw. His fists. He could feel his blood pumping, throbbing in his veins. Heat in his face. All those innocent kids, dead or damaged for the rest of their lives.
    When he came around the corner and unexpectedly met a guard, Liam sprang without hesitation. The guy drew a pistol, equipped with a silencer, from his waistband. Apparently the Gaudet brothers were always respectful of their neighbors.
    The guard, a big, burly guy with a ridiculous Hitler mustache,