River Marked Read Free

his people. “But you got me instead, your friendly neighborhood coyote. You might as well give in because I’ll just annoy you until you do. Of course, I know a cowboy who probably has a cattle prod somewhere if it comes to that.”
    One side of his mouth turned up. “Warren is a werewolf. He doesn’t need a prod to get cows moving.” His voice sounded rough and unused. He glanced down at Ford.
    “He’s not going to hurt anyone soon,” I told the vampire. “But I can drive most people to violence given enough time, so you should get moving.”
    Abruptly, there was a popping noise, and Stefan was gone. I knew he could teleport though he seldom did it in front of me. Both of his people jerked reflexively, so I guessed they hadn’t seen him do it much, either. I dusted off my hands and turned to Rachel.
    “Where is Naomi?” I asked. I couldn’t see her letting things get into this state.
    “She died,” Rachel told me. “Marsilia broke her, and we couldn’t put her back together. I think that was the final straw for Stefan.” She glanced up the stairway. “How did you do that?”
    “He doesn’t want me to get the cattle prod,” I told her.
    Her arms were wrapped around herself, her mutilated hand clearly visible. She was bruised, bitten, battered—and she said, “We’ve been so worried about him. He won’t talk to any of us, not since Naomi died.”
    Poor Stefan had tried to curl up and die because Marsilia had sold him out—and he’d done his best to take the remnants of his menagerie with him. And Rachel was worried about him.
    About him.
    “How many of you are left?” I asked. Naomi had been a tough lady. If she was gone, she wouldn’t have been the only one.
    “Four.”
    No wonder they looked bad. Four people couldn’t feed a vampire all by themselves.
    “He’s been going out hunting?” I asked.
    “No,” she said. “I don’t think he’s been out of the house since we buried Naomi.”
    “You should have called me,” I said.
    “Yes,” said Ford from the ground, his voice deep enough to echo. His eyes were closed. “We should have.”
    Now that he wasn’t attacking me, I could see that he was thin, too. That couldn’t be good in a man transitioning from human to vampire. Hungry vampire fledglings have a tendency to go out and find their own food.
    Stefan should have fixed this before it got so bad.
    If I’d had a cattle prod, I might have been tempted to use it, at least until the stairs creaked and I looked up to see Stefan coming down. I have a dusty degree in history for which I’d sat through a number of films of the Third Reich, and there were men who’d died in the concentration camps who were less emaciated than Stefan in the bright green Scooby-Doo T-shirt he’d filled out just fine when I’d seen him wear it a few months ago. Now it hung from his bones. Cleaned up, he looked worse than he had at first.
    Rachel said that Marsilia had broken Naomi. Looking at Stefan, I thought that she’d come very close to breaking him, too. Someday, someday I would be in the same room with Marsilia with a wooden stake in my hand, and, by Heaven, I would use it. If, of course, Marsilia were unconscious, and all of her vampires were unconscious, too. Otherwise, I’d just be dead because Marsilia was a lot more dangerous than I was. Still, the thought of sinking a sharp piece of wood into her chest through her heart gave me great joy.
    To Stefan, I said, “You need a donor before we go out? So no one pulls us over and makes me take you to the hospital or the morgue?”
    He paused and looked down at Rachel and Ford. He frowned, then looked puzzled and a little lost. “No. They are too weak. There aren’t enough of them left.”
    “I wasn’t talking about them, Shaggy,” I told him gently. “I’ve donated before, and I’m willing to do it again.”
    Ruby eyes gazed hungrily at me before he blinked twice, and they were replaced with eyes like root beer in a glass with the sun