Blake, Abby - Vampires' Witness [PUP Squad Alpha 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) by Abby Blake Page B

approach, and when she stopped a few feet away, uncertain of her welcome, he leaned over and dragged her into the space between him and Samuel. Benjamin kept his arm around her shoulder, but he pressed her against Samuel’s side at the same time. Samuel put his arm around her middle, his hesitation only momentary before he held on tight.
    “Skye, is this the vampire who killed the woman the night you were attacked?” Wilson sounded so formal, and for a moment she worried what that meant.
    “Yes,” she said with a brief glance at the corpse lying in the middle of the room with a massive hole in its chest. She stiffened as images of that horrific first night replayed in her head. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that they had the right vampire.
    “Good,” Wilson said with a kind smile. “That will make it far easier to explain to the Judiciaries why we just killed our boss.”
    “Although,” Alex said with a tight smile, “the fact that he lied about his age, and tried to kill a PUP squad member should be plenty of explanation even without eyewitness testimony.”
    “His age?” Skye asked, trying to figure out what his age had to do with anything.
    “That,” Benjamin said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder but not turning around, “is not the corpse of a seven-hundred-year-old vampire.”
    “How can you tell?” Call it morbid curiosity, but she really wanted to know.
    “When a vampire dies the body tends to decay very rapidly. The older we are the faster it happens. At seven hundred years of age the corpse and all of its bodily fluids should have decayed to dust practically before it hit the ground. As you can see by the mess, that didn’t happen. He was probably closer to seventy or eighty years old, give or take a few years.”
    “So he wasn’t who he said he was?”
    “No, baby girl, he wasn’t,” Benjamin said as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. But then another thought occurred to her and she looked around the room frantically.
    “What about the noise? Shouldn’t we be preparing a story for the police? Surely someone heard the bullets.”
    “Relax, sweetheart, we used silencers. The sound would only have seemed loud because of your vampire hearing. We’ll call a pixie cleanup crew to take care of the mess.”
    “Pixie?” she asked in a small, squeaky voice.
    Samuel must have heard how overwhelmed she was feeling just by the tone of her voice. “We’ll leave the explanation of that for another day.”
    “Let’s get the paperwork done,” Benjamin said as he squeezed her gently and then turned to check on Thomas. “I think we should all plan on taking some time off. Samuel and I have been considering a long holiday anyway, but with the mission turning out the way it has, we’re probably all liable to be stood down from active duty while the Judiciaries review the mission briefs.”
    “True,” Adam said with a happy smile. “It’s probably about time I took Thomas home to his mama. That mean old lady’s liable to rip me a new one if I don’t get him home for Thanksgiving this year.” The wolf that was Thomas growled low in its throat, but by Adam’s happy smile it seemed that it was probably a long-running joke. “And besides, I’d rather be on leave than have to face a desk job while the Judiciaries take their sweet time dottin’ eyes and crossin’ tees.”
    The others all murmured in agreement.

    * * * *

    Skye woke to her sister’s smiling face.
    “Wow, when that sun comes up you really go down for the count. They weren’t kidding.”
    Skye glanced around her and finally realized that she was in her sister’s guest room. “So you believe me now?” she asked unsteadily.
    Jennifer smiled and shrugged. “Seeing a man morph into a wolf in front of my eyes kind of squashed my skepticism.”
    “Is Thomas okay?” Skye asked. She remembered Adam’s reassurance from earlier, but a lot could have changed in the eight hours that she’d slept like the