“They laughed when they saw her. Told her that she couldn’t have a drink.” Mom doesn’t drink. The stupid thought had been the fifteen-year-old’s. Her mother never touched alcohol. Never.
His jaw locked but his gaze never wavered. “Finish it,” he gritted.
She didn’t want to. Dee squeezed her eyes shut.
Darkness.
Just like her mother’s eyes.
Were all vampires really bad?
Some hunters claimed a vampire lost his soul when he was transformed. That goodness died and only evil remained. A shifter had told her that once—he’d said the decay and the rot that he smelled from vamps came from the decay inside, where a soul should be.
Maybe the old fox had been full of bullshit, but she’d asked Jude and he’d said he caught the same stench any time a vamp was near.
Except once, he’d told her about a vamp in LA who—
“How did you get away?” he repeated.
Dee opened her eyes. “She—she had a weapon. That thump I’d heard before, she’d broken a table. I guess they didn’t think she had any fight left, but she did.” A bit of pride there. “When she reached the landing, she lunged and stabbed the lead bastard in the back.”
A moment of weakness. That was all she’d needed. Just a moment.
“Go, Sandra Dee. Go,” she whispered her mother’s last words. A sad smile curved her lips. “And I did. I ran and I left her there.” To die.
Rage and fear had twisted her stomach as she rushed down the hall and out of the house. “I left her,” she repeated, voice still soft. The other vamps had turned on her mother when she’d stabbed the leader, and their attack had given Dee that one moment to break away.
Kill them. The thought now was the same as it had been then. Kill them. She hadn’t wanted to get help. She’d wanted to find someone to kill the bastards in her house.
“I ran outside. Went to a neighbor’s.” They hadn’t been close. Not close enough to hear her first scream. If only.
Mark McKenley and his wife Julie had wanted to go to her house, right away. They’d called the cops, and Mark had taken off with his old hunting shotgun. Dee remembered rushing after him, screaming that the gun wouldn’t be enough.
“Something happened in my house.” She licked her lips. “Fire…the smoke, I saw it the minute I went back outside.”
Mom!
“Fire burns fast, you know. So fast.” Greedy flames, licking up the side of her house, peeling the paint away in thick bubbles, eating at her home.
“I know,” his gruff whisper.
Julie had held her back. Mark, sixty, with stooped shoulders and shaking hands, had burst into the burning house, screaming her mother’s name.
He’d stayed inside, until the firefighters arrived and dragged his body out.
Dead. Like the others.
My fault. She hadn’t even been able to look at Julie after that.
“The cops and firefighters didn’t believe me when I told them what happened.” Not that she could blame them. Hell, they’d probably thought she was crazy or high. “The story ran in the paper a few days later.” She’d read it with tears streaming down her face. “They ruled it a murder-suicide. After the fire stopped, the only remains they found inside were—well, they said they could identify Mom, Dad, and Sara.” Not her. Not now. “No sign of the vamps, of course.”
“Fuck.” Understanding in the guttural word. He knew where this was going.
“They said my mom killed Dad and Sara, then she shoved a knife into her own throat.”
Bullshit. Not her mom. Not the woman who’d sacrificed her own life so Dee could get away. “No one would believe me.” The steady throb in her head was driving her crazy, but she’d deal.
She always did.
“What did you do? Where did you go?”
To the streets. “I took off on my own.” With the stupid idea of finding the vamps who’d attacked her family and killing them. But, at fifteen, she hadn’t known how to live on the streets. She’d been close to starving a week later, dirty, cold. Her jaw locked. “I managed to get by.” A shrug. Like she could shrug away those dark years. “Then I met Jason Pak.” No, he’d found her. Stalked her and found her in that roach-infested apartment she’d bleed to pay for.
“Pak.” He echoed the name. Most folks in Baton Rouge knew of Pak, even if they hadn’t personally met the guy. Bad reputations carried too easily.
“The first thing he told me…He said I wasn’t crazy.” But she’d thought he was.
“And the second?”
Her fingers fisted. “He said he’d teach me to kill the bastards.”
Pak had always been a man of his word.
“I haven’t found those vamps yet, but I will.” One day. Then maybe she’d stop hearing Sara’s screams late at night. Maybe. Or maybe she’d just hear them until she died.
His gaze roved over her face. Her neck. “They didn’t bite you that night?”
“No.” Adamant. A good thing, too, because most folks didn’t understand just how dangerous even a little nip from a vamp could be.
Once a vampire took a victim’s blood, he had a psychic link with his prey. If he was strong enough, he could steal thoughts, memories, and send seductive whispers in the hours of darkness.
Some of them—those ancient Born Masters—it was possible they could even control their prey. Get humans to follow their every twisted command. Like sick, freaking puppets.
Dee never wanted to be a puppet. Never.
Taking a deep breath, she shoved off the couch. Their thighs brushed and she fought to ignore the wave of heat from that quick touch.
Her knees shook a little when she stood. For just a second, black spots danced before her eyes and the nausea rolled in her stomach.
“Dee?” He was there, rising, too, and putting a bracing hand on her shoulder.
Careful. Don’t get used to him being there.
Alone. That was how she lived her life. How she’d keep on living it.
She stiffened her spine and lifted her chin. “I’m all right.” Not a total lie. Dee was pretty sure there was no immediate threat of death.
Slowly, she turned to face Simon. She looked up at him. “After what happened to my family, do you really think I’d ever take a human’s life? I couldn’t do that. I’d be the same as—”
Them.
The vampires. Stealing life, spilling blood.
“I don’t remember what happened in that room, but I know I wouldn’t have staked her.” The vampires. Had they made her watch and she couldn’t even remember it? Had the woman begged her for help?
Simon weighed her with icy eyes. Silence filled the room, heavy and thick, then he gave a grim nod. “If you’d wanted to kill her, she would have been dead on the ground last night.”
Not a ringing endorsement, but she’d take what she could get. “Thanks for that much, at least.”
Then it was her turn to pause because this part, yeah, it would be awkward. Well, hell, not like he hadn’t already had her naked. “I need a favor.” She’d bared her soul to him, a small favor really wasn’t so much to ask in return. “I played your game, told you the hell from my past, now I want one thing from you.”
“Fair enough.”
She thought so.
“What do you need?” He gave a shrug. “You know you can crash here until we find out what’s—uh, Dee?”
Her shirt hit the coffee table. The pounding in her head kicked up a notch. No help for it. She’d had to yank the shirt off. Blood had stained and hardened the fabric, and she never wanted to see the shirt again.
Dee toed out of her shoes. Jerked open her jeans and—
“Just what kind of favor do you need, babe?” His voice had thickened, darkened, and when she glanced up, Dee saw that those smoky eyes of his didn’t look so cold anymore. No, not cold at all.