As always, the disclaimers are on the first chapter!

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First Blood

Nick sniffed the air again before he focused on me. "Stay here."

Yeah, right. Once he stepped into the hotel, my shivering ass followed him right in. I wasn't about to label myself a coward the first time I encountered a mutt. Besides, it was fucking cold out in the snow. Inside, though, I had lost Nick and the overwhelming scent of so many people and perfumes made it impossible for me to track him. I tried to get a visual on him, but it was useless. He probably already followed the scent upstairs.

Upstairs... Why would a mutt come into a busy hotel and head upstairs?

Shit! Our room was upstairs! I bolted for the stairs, stumbling in the sandals that I was wearing. I took the steps two at a time until I reached our tenth floor suite, panting a bit toward the end. Damn, I was still out of shape. I inhaled sharply when the scent of both Nick and the strange werewolf hit my nose. Tired of the heels, I snapped the straps of the sandals and kicked them off. I ran full tilt toward the door of our room.

It was open, and I grabbed the handle to keep myself from bolting right past it. I gave it a bit too hard of a shove and sent the door thudding into the wall behind it. I didn't pause to flinch, I just stepped right into the room and stopped in the middle of the living room. Panting, I inhaled great gulps of the scents around me. Nick, me, our clothes, bathroom items, air conditioning, cleaning chemicals, and werewolf.

I followed the scent of the werewolf to the bedroom. My hand trembled as I reached for the door. It was too quiet for both of them to be here. Too quiet for an intruding mutt to be in our paid for hotel room. Too quiet for a trespasser to be scuffling with the owner of the territory. I let out a startled yelp and jumped back when the door knob turned and the door swung open on it's own.

Nick was standing in the doorway, a pile of clothes in his arms and glaring at me. "I told you to wait downstairs."

"It was cold," I mumbled. I tried to look past him into the bedroom, but he blocked my view.

"Put these on." He shoved a pile of clothes into my arms and closed the bedroom door behind him.

The clothes he gave me were the pajamas I insisted on bringing with me on this trip. A pair of black exercise pants and a black racer-back tank top. I blinked down at the clothes and looked at Nick, who was already stripping out of his tux and putting on similar loose fitting clothing.

"Where are we...?"

"I already called Jeremy and Tonio and alerted them to a mutt who decided our room made a great target for an attack."

"Attack?"

"We're going to track them. I'm not going to let them get away with this shit."

"Shit?"

I felt like a moron, echoing the last word of everything he said, but I was also confused. I looked down at the clothes in my hands. Were we under direct attack? Indirect? Could I please buy a vowel??

Suddenly feeling numb, I looked at the closed bedroom door. Nick didn't close it all the way, so it creaked open with the slightest of pushes. The room was a mess, our few belongings we had brought with us thrown around the room. But there was something else there. A smell I didn't quite recognize.

I stepped further into the room and did a quick visual sweep of the mess. On the mirror above the dresser, in running red ink was the words "We know about you." I furrowed my brow, heart trying to beat it's way out of my chest. Was the ink turning brown? I stepped closer, involuntarily sniffing as I got closer. My mind whizzed with panic before I realized that the ink was actually drying blood. I knew the salty, metallic smell of blood by now, but I had never smelled human blood before.

Stepping around the bed, I tried to make my way closer to the mirror that the message was on. My bare foot bumped into something heavy but not immovable. Glancing down, I saw a black work boot slick with more blood, attached to a leg clad in half-shredded work pants and poking out of the meaty top white... I turned away and retched, emptying my stomach of the dinner we had.

Nick came into the bedroom and guided me away from the scene as I mumbled apologies about getting puke on the dress and on him. I didn't realize how heavily I was leaning on him until he set me down on the couch and I almost fell over.

"At least we know for sure now that you won't go cannibal on us."

My eyes felt sore as I raised them to meet Nick's. His expression was a rare one of absolute seriousness. Nick never got serious. He was the comic relief, not the hardened fighter. I weakly mumbled protests as he started to undress me and change me into the pajama clothes he pulled out for me. Once he made sure I was taken care of, he sat down next to me on the couch.

"They'll be here soon enough. Wanna play cards or somethin' while we wait?" His voice was soft with concern.

"Who?"

"Clay and Elena. What do you know how to play? Poker? Solitaire?"

I shook my head, barely able to concentrate on Nick's voice let alone a game of cards. My mind was still reeling at the idea of a message written in human blood on the mirror in the other room.

"What about TV? We can order a couple movies while we wait."

"I don't want to be here," I whispered. "I don't want to be here with that in the other room."

I knew that Nick's hand was rubbing my back, but my mind didn't want to tear itself away from the scene that I saw in the bedroom. Just feet away from me was the blood of someone I didn't even know decorating my mirror, which could mean the body was there as well. I don't remember having seen a body. Was there a body? My own body trembled at the idea that there might be more carnage than I had already seen.

"How long do we have to stay here?"

I felt Nick's hand move from my back and his arms wrapped around me in a comforting hug. "If they're driving, at least four hours. It'll be fine. The Pack deals with this all the time. C'mon... Let's put on a movie."

I jerked awake when the zombie chasing me down the hotel hall pounded his way into the room just after I slammed the door shut on him. Nick caught me before I fell off the couch and make sure I was awake and steady before getting up to answer the knocking at our actual hotel door.

Nick had ended up renting a movie through the hotel, but I don't even remember what it was. As I watched it with him, my mind was on what lay behind door number one until I fell asleep. That was when my mind took what I had seen and turned it into a full blown nightmare, complete with Night of the Living Dead zombies.

I wasn't even aware of Clay and Elena coming in for inspection and clean-up until they were almost done. I blinked myself back to the present when I felt Nick drop down to the couch next to me and saw Elena and Clay sitting in the chairs across from us, Elena already dialing someone on her cell phone.

"Who do you think it is?" Nick said. "Doesn't seem like something that a mutt would do, but this place reeks of one."

Clay nodded his agreement. "I wish I could say that this is Pack business, but it's not. This mutt has become someone's messenger and we're going to find out who."

He looked up at Elena as she signed off her cell phone. "Jeremy thinks we should take it to the council. There's no need for all of us to go, though. He just wants you two there."

I blinked up at Elena and frowned. "Me? He wants me to go?"

"You were here when it happened, weren't you?" The look she gave me was one I usually gave to the stupid Guests that came to my desk at work. "First hand accounts would be far better than if Clay and I went."

I blinked stupidly again at Elena. The council? I wasn't ready to pull this charade in front of other supernaturals! A more rational voice somewhere in my head reminded me that this was far bigger than my personal situation. It probably wouldn't even come up. And yet, the idea that five other supernatural races will have their eyes locked on me as I retold the story of a rogue werewolf who may be working for someone or something else did not reassure me that everything will be okay.