Blood Kin Read Online Free PDF Page B

moved briskly to the front of the room, the silver patches in his close-cropped dark hair looking as though he’d walked through a snowstorm. But it was the rest of us, out there every night walking through the storm. There was too much happening too fast in the Night World. Alliances shifting, players taken off the board and replaced overnight. It made trying to predict where trouble might flare near impossible.
    Half the injuries we’d incurred were because of stumbling onto unexpected trouble spots, too-small squads and patrols split up encountering more than we could take on. And now it seemed we might have even more players entering the fray.
    Hells, if those Beasts had been Favreaus . . . I rubbed my chin again, not wanting to think about what would happen if more and more factions in the Night World became involved.
    We never backed down, but we were paying the price.
    And increasingly, we seemed to be just a few steps behind. Tonight’s Beast attack must have been planned. It was unlikely a random group of Beasts would decide to attack a Templar patrol just for the hell of it. Question was, what were they up to?
    We needed better information. The kind they seemed to have. But the informants we worked with were clamming up—waiting to see which way the dice fell in the power struggles, no doubt.
    Somehow we had to find some new sources. And soon.
    * * *
    There was no answer when I knocked on Simon’s front door, so I let myself in, intent on raiding his kitchen if he and Lily truly weren’t home. I was starving and in desperate need of something to stave off my longing for sleep.
    I pushed the door shut behind me carefully. My arms and shoulders still ached. Which summoned
her
again. The girl. Damned lucky neither of us had broken anything, though I had only her word that she hadn’t.
    The weather vane story was a blatant lie, but we Templars were charged with keeping the peace in the streets, not policing small crimes. Detaining everyone who raised our suspicions in the border boroughs would be a full-time job, not to mention act like a match to kindling on the City’s mood right now.
    No one wanted that.
    “Simon?” I called down the hallway. There was no answer, but the sudden sound of breaking glass from the rear of the house burned away my fatigue with a burst of adrenaline. I broke into a run, drawing my pistol as I pelted down the long hallway.
    “Simon!” I shouted again.
    There was another thumping crash, a snarl, and a cutoff yowl. I reached the sunroom at the rear of the house. Just in time to see Lily pulling her dagger free from the throat of yet another dead Beast.
    “What exactly is going on here?” I demanded.
    Simon was crouched by the body of the Beast, his expression an odd mix of satisfaction and regret.
    Lily looked up at me, wiped her dagger clean, and sheathed it by her hip. “Hello, Guy.”
    “I asked a question,” I said, trying to keep a rein on my temper.
    Simon nodded toward the body. “He broke in. He attacked us. We took steps.”
    “So I see.” I didn’t let the string of curses bubbling in my throat free. My gut crawled as I stared down at the Beast. Light brown fur. Like the one we’d killed earlier. “Fuck.” I’d never liked coincidences. “Couldn’t you have just knocked him out?”
    “Dead is safer,” Lily said with a shrug.
    “But less useful,” I countered. “Now we don’t know what he wanted.”
    “I’d say either Lily or me,” Simon said.
    “Me,” Lily said, her voice still calm. “He came for me first.”
    “He might have just been trying to get you out of the way,” Simon countered.
    “We’ll never know,” I said sourly. “I don’t suppose you recognize him?” I directed the question at Lily. She had far more intimate knowledge of the Night World and its denizens than either Simon or me.
    “Looks like a Favreau,” Lily said. “Maybe a Broussard. Hard to tell.”
    And in hybrid form, the Beast wasn’t carrying any useful