“Are you injured?” he asked. His voice, soft and deep, carried a British accent.
Unable to find her own, she shook her head.
“You know what I am, what they are,” he commented, motioning to the deceased vampires with a tilt of his head.
“Yes,” she squeezed past her tight throat. “Are you … are you all right?”
He nodded and glanced in the direction of the fleeing vampire. “I’ve one more to take care of.”
“Do you want me to call in reinforcements?”
A wicked smile curled his lips as he began walking backward in the direction of his prey. “And spoil my fun? No, thank you.”
Something about that smile, the dark anticipation that filled his handsome features, produced a flutter of butterfly wings in her belly.
“Am I correct in assuming you’re a Second?”
She opened her mouth to respond in the negative.
Seconds were humans who worked with immortals and protected them during the daylight hours when they had to scorn the sun. All were very carefully screened to ensure their loyalty and underwent extensive martial arts and weapons training. They were also a lot like Secret Service agents and wouldn’t hesitate to give their lives to save that of their Immortal Guardian … which was why Seconds were almost always male. Apparently most immortals tended to be old-fashioned and found the idea of a woman’s sacrificing her life for them too unpalatable to bear.
The sudden bleating of her cell phone made Ami jump and snap her mouth shut.
She fumbled for the phone.
The immortal looked over his shoulder, his eagerness to begin the chase evident.
When she glimpsed the caller ID, Ami barely suppressed a groan. “Go ahead,” she urged the immortal and waved to the bodies of the vampires, which were shriveling up as the parasitic virus that infected them devoured them from the inside out in a desperate bid to live. “I’ll take care of this.”
He hesitated.
Ami brought the phone to her ear and answered in as normal a voice as she could produce after the past nerve-wracking few minutes. “Hi, Seth.”
“Hello, sweetheart.”
The immortal’s eyebrows flew up. No doubt his preternaturally enhanced hearing had allowed him to listen to the bass-baritone greeting of the leader of the Immortal Guardians … as well as the affection that laced it.
“You’re late. Where are you?” Seth continued.
“I, ah …” Ami surveyed the bloody clearing, considered how assiduously Seth guarded her safety, and thought it best not to worry him. “I … just stopped to return the movies Darnell and I rented last night.”
A grin split the immortal’s face, evoking such an appealing transformation that Ami could only stare, speechless.
Apparently reassured by her acquaintance with Seth and Darnell (the Second of one of the most powerful immortals) and titillated by her evasion of Seth’s question, he winked, offered her a cocky salute with the sword in his uninjured arm, then seemed to vanish into thin air as he took off after the vampire who had gotten away.
The tension that she hadn’t realized had tightened nearly every muscle in her body disappeared with him, leaving her with an almost light-headed, giddy feeling.
“Everything all right, Ami?”
“Everything’s fine,” she said and meant it.
Not only had she managed to confront a stranger—a strange man—without giving in to the panic that usually consumed her in such instances and either fleeing in terror or dissolving into a pathetic, quivering lump; she had actually helped said stranger defeat the group of vampires who had attacked him.
Jubilation laced with tremendous relief flooded her. Seth was right. She really was getting better. Those monsters hadn’t broken her.
“I’m fine,” she repeated, so happy now she could’ve danced. “Sorry I’m running late. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“All right. Be careful.”
“I will,” she chirped and returned the phone to her pocket with a grin. Unscrewing the silencer, she dropped it in her pocket and slipped the Glock into its holster.
As she left the trees and approached the decomposing vampires, her grin turned into a grimace. Blech. She had never before witnessed what happened to vampires when they were destroyed. The scent resembled that of an overflowing city Dumpster on a hot summer day. The vampires she had shot had disintegrated completely, leaving only empty bloody clothing and weapons. The others were rapidly decaying, shriveling up like mummies, then collapsing in on themselves like balloons having the air sucked out of them.
A slight shudder shook her.
Did this happen to immortals, too, when they were destroyed?
Vampires and immortals were both infected with the same rare virus that first conquered, then replaced their immune system. It leant them greater strength, speed, and longevity, healed their wounds at an accelerated rate, and kept them from aging. All good things. But infection with the virus also left them with an unfortunate photosensitivity and a sort of severe anemia.
Immortals and vampires, however, differed in one very significant way: immortals had been something more than human even before the virus had transformed them.
Born with far more advanced and complex DNA than ordinary humans, they called themselves gifted ones … at least before their transformation. They didn’t know why they differed genetically from humans. They knew only that the thousands of extra DNA memo groups they possessed bestowed upon them wondrous gifts and talents others lacked and enabled their bodies to mutate the virus that infected them, eliminating the more corrosive aspects.
Immortals, for instance, did not suffer the madness that swiftly descended upon vampires, whose brains were damaged by the virus’s assault. They also didn’t fall into the deep, coma-like sleep vampires did when the sun rose.
Wrinkling her nose, Ami picked up a bloody shirt using only her thumb and forefinger. Immortals were not destroyed by extreme blood loss either. Instead, they slipped into a sort of stasis or hibernation not unlike that of a water bear until a source of blood came along.
“Well, there’s no avoiding it,” she muttered. Since she lacked gloves, she was going to have to get her hands dirty. The clothing she would bury in one or more of the strip mall’s Dumpsters. The sticky, crimson-coated weapons she would collect and store in her Roadster’s trunk. She couldn’t do anything about the bloody ground. Hopefully another autumn shower would come along and wash it clean.
Kneeling down, she began to gather the clothing into a rancid pile.
Thank goodness she had some hand wipes in the car.
Marcus staggered through the front door of his two-story home, closed it, and leaned back against the cool wood.
Eight. Eight vampires had worked together and attacked him in a surprisingly well-choreographed battle. There had been none of the usual clumsy, swinging-wild bullshit. These vamps had actually seemed to have undergone some sort of instruction.
He snorted. Not that their measly talent could ever equal his own. He had trained with a master swordsman. No fanged slacker with a machete could match his skill.
Weary, he let his head drop back against the door.
The vampire he had chased after leaving the redheaded pixie had led him to two others. The two new guys had brashly stood against him. The third had taken off running again while his latest cronies fell.
Marcus could have gone after him … again … but, wounds stinging, had decided to call it a night. He’d get the bastard tomorrow. Or the next night.
A steady pat pat pat drew his attention. Looking down to seek its source, he noticed several crimson puddles forming around his feet.
He started toward the kitchen with a groan, peeling off his long coat and letting it fall in a heap on the bamboo floor of the foyer. The dark T-shirt and jeans he wore beneath bore numerous tears and holes. Like most other immortals, he always wore black when he hunted so any insomniac or nosy neighbor who might witness his return wouldn’t see the blood.
And there was quite a lot of it tonight.
Lacerations that should have already healed but couldn’t because he had lost too much blood covered his entire body. A vamp had dislocated one of Marcus’s shoulders. And every migraine-inducing throb of his left leg increased his certainty that his fibula was broken.
It seemed to take him half an hour just to limp his way around the island in the center of his roomy kitchen. Opening the refrigerator door, Marcus leaned down with a groan, pulled open the specially designed meat compartment drawer, and swore foully.
Empty.
Shoving it closed, he slammed the refrigerator door with a grunt and contemplated his options.
He could either go out again and feed the old-fashioned way or suck it up and admit he needed help.
Marcus stumbled out of the kitchen, across the foyer, and into his living room.
He’d go back out again. Just as soon as he got his second wind.
Gingerly, he lowered himself onto his comfy six-foot cream-colored sofa, closed his eyes, and exhaled a long sigh.
Bing bong.
His eyes flew open. Who the hell was ringing his doorbell at—he glanced at the clock on the mantel—4:31 in the morning? And how had he not heard the person’s approach? Was he that weak?
Bing bong.
Well, he wasn’t expecting anyone, so whoever it was must be up to no good.
Bing bong.
And when he stopped leaning on the freakin’ doorbell and decided to break and enter, he would be in for a rude awakening.
Marcus perked up a bit at that. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to go out after all. He could just feed on the burglar.
Bing bong.
If the burglar would get off his ass and get to the bloody burglarizing already!
Bing bong bing bong bing bong.
Growling, Marcus flung himself from the sofa and stalked over to the front door.
Okay, he didn’t stalk. It was more of an agonized, yet determined half-lurch half-skip he would no doubt regret; but pain and the doorbell prodded his temper.
Ready to scare the holy hell out of whoever his new tormentor was, he yanked the door open, then drew up short. “Oh,” he grumbled. “It’s you.”
