by May Dawson
I laughed and shook my head as I turned back. “They’re like my brothers. There’s nothing else there—but brothers is a lot, you know.”
She pursed her lips. “Are you going to feel okay when they move on?”
“Yes,” I promised.
“If you’re sure,” she said, raising her beer for the two of us to toast. I clinked the top of my bottle with hers.
“I’d tell Carter to move on tonight if I could,” I said. “Yet again.”
But I couldn’t because we had a mission. It was probably confusing for him because Carter and I flirted like it was our jobs. We had a little road show; he poured ‘liquor’ down my throat like a sketchball, I flirted with him, showing off a little leg and a lot of neck, I looked drunk, then I ended up lost and alone and inviting… to a vamp.
From the way that redhead was trying to defy physics and press herself against him until their bodies occupied the same space, Carter definitely had the option to move on tonight if he chose.
“I’m not going to change my mind, Elly. You can stop worrying I’ll have regrets.”
For some reason, I thought about Duncan. The memory of that jawline, the fierceness in those icy blue eyes, all made me feel a strange restless tension. When I thought about him, I wondered about the tattoos I’d glimpsed and what the rest of them looked like. There was something about him that felt… magnetic.
I’d been right to send him away. There was something strange about him, and I knew I should tell Elly about it, but I didn’t want to.
Because it would be hard to explain what felt so strange about him.
In five years, I’d learned how to fake normal.
But I hadn’t learned how to fall in love.
The way Duncan kept coming back to my mind felt…peculiar.
“What’s on your mind?” Elly asked.
I raked my fingers through my hair, pushing it back absently. I shrugged. I didn’t want to talk about it.
Julian joined Carter at the bar, helped him carry over a round of beers and shots.
As they walked toward us, Julian passed his hand subtly over the drinks, taking away the alcoholic buzz.
Then Carter set the shot glass in front of me with a self-satisfied thump.
“Drink up,” he said, “I’ll just keep on getting cuter.”
“I don’t think you could get any cuter,” I half-slurred playfully, leaning forward to slide my hand up the hard muscle of his bicep. A strained look crossed his face, as if my touch really affected him, before he grinned.
“You are definitely drunk,” Julian said loudly, before taking a sip. More softly, he added, “We’ve got company.”
“Then I guess Alisa can tell me what’s on her mind later,” Elly said pointedly. “I know there’s something.”
“There’s always something going on in this wild brain.” Carter palmed my head with his big hand, before wobbling my head back and forth. He was lucky I had to pretend to be drunk and infatuated, because I was definitely going to make him pay for that later.
“Let’s go play some pool,” I said.
We toasted quickly, clinking our shot glasses together. “Swords,” Julian murmured for us all, and I knew he had an eye on our vamps to make sure they didn’t hear us.
To our swords. Never drawn without cause, never sheathed without honor was the rest of the refrain. But we all had to be genuinely drunk before we started to wax on.
Elly had been lying that day when she said they always preferred guns over swords. Swords were quieter and plenty of monsters were almost bullet-proof.
But rule one of Hunting is that everything dies when you lop off its head.
The harsh whiskey burned down my throat, and I choked. “Lord, Carter, you could spring for the good stuff every now and then.” I picked up my beer to wash the taste away.
“That is the good stuff,” Carter managed to look hurt. He slung his arm over my shoulders as the two of us swaggered toward the pool tables in the back. The two pool tables were on a raised dais, separated from the rest of the bar by a decorative rail. It was the perfect vantage point to keep an eye on my new friends.
He turned me toward him, his hands on my hips, our bodies intimately close. “Do you need me to distract Elly?” he asked. “Is she nagging you again?”
“Always,” I said. He was looking at me with those warm, open eyes—he was my best friend—and I added, “I met someone today who said he knows me. Knew me.”
Carter’s eyes widened. He knew how hard I’d tried to track down my past, and he knew when I’d given up.
“You believe him?” he asked.
“I don’t know what to believe,” I said. “You know how much I want that.”
“Christ, take your sweet time racking,” Julian said. His ass bumped my hip familiarly as he set the pool table, and he took the opportunity to mutter, “Company at your eleven.”
I ran my hands over Carter’s chest intimately, looking over his shoulder as I pretended to nibble his ear. His breath gave against my chest as I found the vamps; they were crowded by the bar, flirting with the redhead and her friends.
“Fuck, you should take those girls home to keep them safe,” I whispered to him. Then with a wink I added, “and to give them the best night of their lives.”
Not that I would know.
Elly kissed us goodbye, planning to leave us to our game; she’d try to run down the vamps’ hive while they were busy here.
“Later,” she chided me. “You’re coming over for dinner tomorrow.”
“I think that’s a little much quality time,” I teased before I turned to set up my shot.
As I leaned over the pool table, Carter landed a playful smack on my ass.
“Be nice to your grandma,” he teased.
She gave him a look. “I’m going to let some beastie eat all three of you.”
“What did I do?” Julian demanded.
“No, she’s not,” Carter said. “She’s going to feed us fried chicken and try to fix us, like she always does.”
Elly scoffed. “Even I can admit when something is a lost cause.”
Carter walked her out to her car just to make sure she was safe—Hunters are never truly alone—and Julian and I kept an eye on the vamps in the meantime. My pool playing was a lot better when I knew there was no risk of Carter smacking the back of my jeans. He embraced playing the obnoxious boyfriend a bit too much.
When he did come back, he brought another round of shots, and I kept getting louder and bouncier as we went through our game.
“Let’s do some research into this mysterious new friend of yours,” Julian suggested. “Figure out what he wants. What he actually knows.”
These two were always on my side.
“I don’t know how I’d even find him again,” I said, leaning over to take my last shot. “Corner pocket!”
“Was that tank top designed with any intention of keeping your breasts contained?” Carter demanded as I bent over.
“Shoot!” I straightened from the shot I’d sloppily missed, as the cue ball jumped the end of the pool table and rolled across the floor. I had to chase it to catch it, which brought me almost to the vampire’s table. I kneeled a few feet away from them, close enough to smell the dark, obnoxious cologne they wore to cover the odor of blood.
“You look good on your knees,” one of the vamps muttered, so quietly that if I didn’t hunt assholes for a living, I might have doubted I heard him correctly.
I grabbed the cue ball and straightened, rubbing my lipstick with the back of my hand so it smeared across my cheek. I was good at faking messy drunk and looking good at it, too. I gave them a slow, horny once-over—these greasy vamps knew they looked good to humans—and then sashayed back to my friends.
My ass looked luscious in these tight jeans. I knew they were watching.
I was a natural with a sword. I’d learned a lot over the past five years though that hadn’t come so easily. Elly and the other female Hunters had to tea
ch me how to walk naturally even when someone was checking me out. They’d taught me how to be deliberately sexy, how to trick a man with his eyes on my boobs, so they never noticed what I was doing with my hands…or a blade.
I held my hands to either side and shimmied to answer Carter, once I was positioned to give the vamps a good look too. “These babies cannot be contained! I cannot be contained.”
“You’re wild,” he laughed, wrapping me in his arms and hugging me tight. It was the same warm, affectionate hug that Carter always offered me, wherever we were and whatever we were planning. He added, “And drunk.”
“Me?” I asked innocently, then blanched. “I’ll be right back.”
The bar had a hall that led past the restrooms to a rear exit. When I’d knelt to pick up the cue ball, I’d noted that one of the vamps was positioned to watch down that hallway. If I were going to kidnap someone, I’d force them right out that door into the parking lot.
But I was going to make it extra easy for them. I didn’t appreciate the competition from the redhead.
I made a show of being about to hurl and stumbled right past the women’s room door, slamming myself into the back door as I stumbled out into the cool night air. I was still bent over pretending to yak across the concrete when arms circled my waist and yanked me to the left. The second vamp threw the car door open just before I reached it, and the first one bundled me into the back.
I screamed, belatedly, and lashed out at the one who had just taken me. I wouldn’t want to scream in public and draw some well-intentioned civilian into the fray. I was sure their car was soundproofed.
Now they would discover they had their hands more full than they realized. I twisted to reach my blade as the vamps piled into the backseat with me. The two of them flashed toothy grimaces, their fangs ripping out of their gums. They looked like frat boys—I’d been kidnapped by a couple of bros. The thought of anyone’s life ending by bro seemed like an extra tragedy.
The first one lunged at me, but my blade was in my hand, and I caught his throat in my hand. Carter and Julian would be just a step behind. I had to hurry and gut these two before I had to share the win with my friends.
“We heard about you guys, Alisa,” said the second one just as he pulled a potion bottle out of his pocket.
Fuck. The vamps had probably made Carter and Julian too, then. My friends might need a rescue.
I didn’t know what that was in the bottle, but I doubted it was anything good.
I kicked out at him, slamming my booted foot into his face, and he let out a grunt. He dropped the bottle and thrashed around, trying to avoid my next kick. He didn’t make it—my heel clipped him across the temple.
The guy I was struggling with managed to croak out a word in Latin just as the other guy smashed the bottle open with his heel.
I inhaled a sharp, sweet tang of magic, and stared at the two bleeding vamps, their long, gleaming fangs biting into their lips and their eyes gleaming with anticipation.
“What exactly is that supposed to do besides piss me off?” I demanded.
The car door was wrenched open. I looked up with a thrill of relief, expecting to find Julian and Carter safe and unharmed.
Duncan filled the doorway. His breath came fast, as if he were enraged, and his eyes on the two men were icy. All three of us paused; the sense of threat that radiated from him was powerful.
Intoxicating, even.
I didn’t know where the hell that thought had come from, but the wayward horniness was driven away as two shadows shot into the car. I leapt back from the vampire I’d almost strangled as the shadow—no, it was a black dog, an enormous, snarling black dog—slammed into him.
The car rocked as the dogs each leapt onto a vampire. The dogs sounded vicious, growling and snarling, and the vamps screamed, and then there was a wet ripping sound and it was all over.
Blood splattered across my face, cool droplets that I wiped away with the hem of my tank top. My heart was pounding—there was a part of me that was afraid of the dogs—but I knew better than to move fast.
“Thanks for the rescue, boys,” I told them, my voice calm.
“What’s wrong with you—” Duncan began. That icy glare turned on me, although I didn’t feel any fear that the hounds would attack me. In fact, they bounded out of the car and each went to his side, turning around and sitting.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” I cut him off.
Despite his cold words and even colder gaze, his hands automatically found the dogs’ heads. He stroked them and played with their ears, and the dogs butted against his legs as if they’d all but forgotten me.
Duncan’s intense gaze, though, never left mine.
“I’ve got to check on my friends,” I said, sliding past him out of the car.
“How peculiar,” he said. “Alisa with friends?”
“Stay right there,” I told him. “Don’t move. I want you to meet someone.”
He scoffed at that.
I ran into the bar, but I couldn’t find Carter and Julian. I glanced around the smoky room where music was blasting and people were playing pool or carrying on colorful conversations, then plunged out through the front doors. Where the hell were they?
I found them mopping up a fight outside the front of the bar. Carter arched his sword through the air, cutting down a vampire. Julian saw a woman at the end of the street who witnessed the whole thing, who saw the bodies scattered across the sidewalk and turned digging into her purse for her phone. He took off running after her to take away her memory.
That was one reason why I could never be with Julian, even though I appreciated our need for a clean-up crew. My own lost memories felt too much like jagged wounds to be with someone who left those holes in other’s minds.
Carter saw me and threw his arm around me, hugging me tight, mindless of the blood that covered us both. “Thank God, you’re okay. They had us made from the beginning.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “They had some kind of potion to take me out, but it didn’t work.”
Carter’s jaw tightened with anger that they’d tried to hurt me, but all he said was, “Of course it didn’t. You’re no mere mortal.”
“I wish.” I spent an awful lot of time bruised up—I was definitely mortal.
Julian headed back toward us, his hands in his pockets. Even though he wore a leather jacket, his dark hair smoothed back from the hard angles of his face in a normal style, he seemed to carry an air of magic.
“Guys,” I said. “My mystery man is back.”
“Let’s go meet him.” Carter sheathed his sword on his back, and Julian touched his back, magicking it out of sight once again. I knelt and tucked my knives smoothly into the tops of my boots.
But when we got around the back of the bar, Duncan was gone, and so were the dogs.
Chapter Four
Azrael
In the middle of the night, I joined Duncan outside a six-story tan-brick building. “How is she?”
“She got into a fight with some vampires,” he said bluntly. “She’s fine.”
Cold fury prickled over my skin. She’d been fighting while I slept? “You didn’t think to mention that?”
“I was the one on watch,” Duncan answered. “There was no reason to disturb you.”
There was no good reason I should be angry with Duncan. I leaned against the brick wall beside him, shoving my hands into my pockets. “What happened to the vampires?”
He didn’t grace that with an answer.
As we waited there, a homeless man took a piss in the alley to one side. There couldn’t be a place more removed from Alisa’s former life of opulence.
“She must be losing her mind, living here.” A distinct pang of satisfaction strummed in my chest, then I realized how ridiculous it was. She’d toyed with my affections and used my weakness for her to destroy my court. I shouldn’t be amused by how far she’d fallen when her only punishment was a cheap apartment and the mortal world.
&nb
sp; I should want to destroy her.
Should.
A wayward memory of her rose in my mind. Alisa, glancing at me over her shoulder, a mischievous smile written across her red lips.
Also contained within that memory: Duncan shoulder-checking me, telling me I was an idiot. He’d hissed that Alisa was poison.
Of course she was.
But alcohol was poison too. So was sugar. Everything sweet and addictive was toxic eventually, wasn’t it?
“I don’t think she is.” Duncan watched me, and I knew he was waiting to see how the words landed. “She seems happy enough.”
I scoffed.
“Brace yourself,” Duncan said, “because here’s the strangest part of all. People seem to like her.”
“We liked her.”
“Speak for yourself.” Duncan peeled himself off the wall; he wouldn’t want to explore that perspective any longer. Duncan wrapped hatred around himself like it was his favorite blanket.
Apparently, that was his version of goodbye. He headed down the street, back to the hotel where the three of us had sheltered for now.
I waited until dawn, making sure that Alisa was safe. When the horizon was a mottled bruise of pinks and blues, I decided the princess had slept long enough.
A woman came toward the door of the building, cradling a paper sack of groceries in her arms. I moved quickly toward the door to intercept her, and she turned wide eyes toward me, her fingers tightening on the keys she’d already fished out of her purse.
“I’m friendly,” I told her, letting the truth of it warm my voice. I smiled at her, and her eyes brightened. “I’m going in to surprise an old friend.”
“Okay,” she said agreeably, and held the once-locked door open for me.
Humans are so easy.
I followed her in, then walked up the three flights of stairs to Alisa’s place. The air carried a faint, stale odor. Careful not to brush against the wall or stair railing—I didn’t mind getting dirty in battle, but I wasn’t trying to catch some human disease—I reached the top and headed down the dim hall of faceless doors.