My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon

The breakfasts were terrific, and Kat loved all the frilly girly stuff. She'd just about gone wild over the gardens, tea cozies, and the way the bed tried to swallow us both whole. The stackable washer and dryer down the hall still held our stinking, torn clothes, soaking out the last bit of bloodsucker smell. We'd washed them four times already.

This morning, though, she bounced on me like a terrier. "Get up, lazybones. Time to read the paper."

I wanted to bury my face in the pillow, but she was just too pretty. Kat's small—only about five-four—but every inch of her is packed with dynamite. She looks like a little blonde ballerina princess, helped along by the hour she spends in dance class pretty much every day, rain or shine. I don't see where she gets the energy, between night classes, day work in the office, and hunting bloodsuckers. She has these big blue eyes and this sharp aristocratic nose, and her mouth is just made for kissing.

So I pulled her down, and I did.

It took a long time before I was close to done, and she shook herself free before I was even halfway there. "Try to keep your mind on business. I'm still mad at you, you know."

"Christ, my heart can't take that." I gave her my best aw shucks, ma'am grin. It usually works better when I'm not unshaven and bruised—I get my five o'clock shadow before noon. Just one of the perks of being a Sunru

I guess being married involves holding your tongue a lot. No wonder most men think it's so rough.

The smile that spread over her face was worth keeping my big mouth shut. That's my Kat, all fire one minute and softness the next. "I'm not mad, I guess." She was only in a tank top and panties, both candy-cotton pink. Matching the room.

The woman just has no mercy.

"I'm not a field agent, anyway. I'm an intelligence analyst, I track migrations and collate reports. That was my first time staking."

Are you trying to kill me? "Your first time?"

"Well, I did okay." She pushed her hair back. Her knees were on either side of my hips, and her weight on me was incredibly distracting. "Now it's time for you to get up and read the paper. Breakfast's still warm. You want coffee, don't you?"

"Coffee can wait." I got both hands on her shoulders and brought her mouth back down to mine, and things were heading in a very satisfactory direction before she broke away again. "Goddammit, woman. You're going to kill me."

"Maybe," she agreed cheerfully. "But not until after you read the paper."

"Screw the paper." I caught her mouth again and ran my fingers over the slim arches of her ribs, my fingers scraping off green herbal paste dried against the wound. Argentum believe in old-fashioned cures. Mugwort and holy water do wonders for bloodsucker wounds.

I went cold all over, touching it, and she laughed, a particular low husky chuckle that just about turned me inside out before she let me do what I was dying to do each time I saw her.

The sunshine had moved on the bed before I stopped breathing heavy, my face in her hair and the little shudders going through both of us. "Nice," she whispered into my neck. "I like that."

"Me too." Better each time, actually. I guess waiting for marriage was worth it. "What do you say we do it again?"

"You're a menace." She shivered again, a delightful little movement. The air-conditioning had kicked on. "Move over, I'm cold."

"Delighted to." Something crackled as I finally got her under the covers and cuddled up against me, her panties gone and her tank top discarded too.

She didn't snuggle nearly long enough before fishing around with one hand and bringing up something I blinked at. It was the county seat's daily, the Cotton Crossing Register. "Jesus." I managed a moan. "You just don't quit, do you?"

"A couple of minutes ago you were happy about that." She spread the paper out one-handed, awkwardly. "Take a look."

"I don't want to." I brushed her hair back, the golden floss tangling around my fingers like seaweed. "All that's in there is who tipped whose cow or quilted someone else's corn or something."

"Shows what you know, Fido."

"Are you going to keep calling me that?"

"Until you live the other night down, yes. Since you won't read, I'll tell you all about it." She snuggled down, her hip bumping me. "Police blotter says four kids disappeared two nights ago. Their car was found up at Lover's Leap."

"Disappeared? In a town this size?"

"You were the one who wanted a road-trip honeymoon; this town is bigger than the last one you subjected me to. At least it's a county seat. By the way, if our children have tails and floppy ears you're going to be making the explanations."

"The change doesn't happen until puberty. Protective coloration. And I liked the idea of pulling over whenever you wanted to act like a teenager at the drive-in." I sighed, settling her head on my shoulder more securely. "Four kids?"

"Remember that car? The one that happened by just after we staked those two sanguine?"

"Ford. Four-door. Rounded headlights." Right after you almost gave me a heart attack by vanishing under a hundred and a half pounds of spitting bloodsucker. A thin thread of unease worked its way through me.

"Was it? I couldn't see, you were in the way. Anyway, their car was unlocked and just sitting up there, the paper says. What does that tell you?"

"That someone's going to have to explain why they left Daddy's car up on the ridge?"

She nudged me with her hip. "No, idiot. It means there's a nest around here."

"Good God." I hadn't gotten past the two bloodsuckers we'd killed. I'd been too worried about Kat. "You think so?"

"I don't think, I know. Guess why it made not just the blotter this morning, but also the second page."

I didn't want to know. "Why?"

"Because two kids disappeared last week too. Boy and girl, a nice couple. She was a cheerleader; he was the local football star. Want to put even money where they probably disappeared from?"

FOR A TOWN OF THIRTY THOUSAND PEOPLE, IT certainly looked like a fifties movie set of the proverbial one-horse burg. Kat outright refused to stay in a place with less than two stoplights. I'm not the only urban creature in our relationship.

Of course, Kat's first stop was the local library, a brick building sandwiched between a feed store and Cotton Crossing's City Hall, such as it was.

Scratch an Argentum Astrum, and you'll find both an over-achiever and a great believer in law and order, not to mention a dyed-in-the-wool research nut.

"Shhh." She laid her finger against my lips before turning back to the screen. "Will you be quiet?"

"There's nobody in here." Libraries make me itchy, all that quiet and dust in the air. Librarians always look like they could eat you alive if you make too much noise.

Kat rolled her eyes. The muscle in her shoulders flickered as she moved. "It's the principle of the thing, Mitch."

"You and your principles. How did you get to be a Silver Star?" My leather jacket creaked a little. It was ninety degrees in the shade, but I wasn't about to give up the pocket space. Besides, we weren't going to be strolling around outdoors, and in this part of the country, air-conditioning was the rule rather than the exception.

"They recruited me in high school. My mother was one before she died." She spun the dial on the microfiche machine, pushing a little lever and staring at the screen. "Huh. Interesting."

"I love to hear you say that." I ran my fingers under her hair, touched the back of her neck. She shivered, but not enough to disturb her concentration.

"So what do you shift into?" She moved the lever again, glanced over her shoulder at the bookcases. Checking to make sure nobody heard us, or checking her blindspot like a nervous Argentum?