Dee ignored him. Pretty easy to do most days. “We’ve got this one covered.”
Chase’s jaw worked but he shoved his hand into his back pocket and pulled out a card. “You change your mind, you call me.”
Don’t take it, don’t take it, don’t, ah…hell. Dee’s fingers curled around the card.
She didn’t even see his hand move. But in the next instant, his fingers were around hers and he brought her hand to his mouth. His lips pressed against her flesh, his tongue tasted her.
Two seconds, maybe three. Then he dropped his hold and flashed that bad boy grin. “I wanted a little taste.”
So did she.
“Dee…”
She knew that tone. Jude would be having a fit any second—or as close to a fit as a tiger could have.
Chase brushed past her and disappeared into the crowd.
“Shop for a new lover later, we’ve got problems now.” He bent his head toward her and whispered right against her ear, “Kymine.”
Dee sucked in a sharp pull of air.
“They’re pumping it in the place. And if the kymine is here…”
Then the vamps were, too.
Kymine. A sweet little concoction the vamps had created about ten years ago, a brew that they pumped into the air in order to screw with a shifter’s sense of smell.
With about 95 percent accuracy, shifters could pick up the stench of a vamp in a crowded room. Jude had told her once that, to him, vamps smelled like corpses. Yeah, that made sense, considering that vampires were dead. Kinda anyway.
To be reborn as a vampire, a human had to die. The heart stopped. The brain ceased to function. The lungs didn’t rise.
Dead. Cold. Hello, afterlife.
Almost hello. Because if the exchange was successful, a few moments of true death were all the person would have. The heart would beat again, the lungs would fill, and the brain would kick-start to life again.
Alive once more, with a few new extra features.
Like fangs, super strength, and a nearly insatiable lust for blood.
Because the vampires knew that the shifters could smell them—and have one hell of a hunting advantage—they’d researched like crazy and finally produced kymine.
Kymine could only be used in a closed, restricted area. Once it was pumped into the ventilation system, it dispersed. A shifter unlucky enough to be in the area would temporarily lose his sense of smell.
And feel as if fire were burning the inside of his nostrils.
“I can’t smell a damn thing,” Jude said, still close, his breath whispering against her ear. To others, they’d look like lovers.
The best way to hunt. Deceive. Mislead.
“The bastards could be right next to me,” he said, “and I still wouldn’t know.”
So much for the shifter being her secret weapon tonight.
But there were too many lights in that place. Too many people, too many eyes. If a vampire was there, he’d only be scouting for food. The feast would come later.
When he had his prey alone.
Time to switch up plans. “Let’s go outside. You take the front, I’ll take the back.” They’d leave Zane inside, he could keep a careful watch on the bar.
The bar owners had to know about the vampires. No other reason they’d pump in the kymine.
“We need to tell Zane. He’ll need to—”
“Already did.” He eased back and she caught the glimpse of fang. “You armed?”
Her brow shot up. “Seriously? You’re asking me that?”
A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. “Let’s get the bastards.”
Good plan.
She reached into her bag and curled her fingers around her stake.
Showtime.
The night was too quiet. Especially for this part of town. There should have been laughter on the wind. Drunken voices. Car horns or the fading beat of music.
Dee paced about twenty feet behind Onyx. No stragglers waited outside. No lovers looked for a quick screw.
Alone.
With the thick silence.
So not natural.
She rocked back on her heels and tried to ignore the fact that Chase lounged somewhere in that bar. He’d probably moved on to a more agreeable partner. One of those women who could laugh and smile and mean it, and not someone who couldn’t stop glancing over her shoulder because she knew there were monsters out there, waiting.
Be afraid of the dark. A lesson she’d learned when she’d been fifteen.
So very afraid.
The faintest pad of footsteps reached her ears. Dee didn’t tense, that would alert her prey. She exhaled, nice and slow and—
“You’re dead, Dee.”
A woman’s voice, soft and mellow.
Slowly, Dee turned toward her. Tall, thin, with a long mane of midnight black hair, the woman stood near the exit of the back parking lot. She was alone, unarmed, and smiling.
Dee kept the stake hidden. No way to tell yet if she was staring at a vamp, a demon, a human—or hell knew what. Come on, Jude, get your ass back here. But if the kymine hadn’t worn off, he wouldn’t be much help, either.
“Are you afraid?” the woman asked.
Dee decided she hated the bitch. “No. Are you?”
The woman glided closer. One of those annoying graceful moves that dancers seemed to make.
Dee marched toward her, more than ready to meet the chick head on.
“No one will mourn, Dee. No one will even miss you when you’re rotting in the ground.”
Ah, so she was little Miss Sunshine and Light. Dee grunted. “And what? You think you’re the one whose gonna take me out?” She shook her head. “Sorry, sister, it’s been tried more than a few times and the assholes who come for me are the ones who wind up in the graves.”
The woman’s lips tightened. Good. It was always better to get under their skin, to rattle them, to—
“You should have died with your family.”
Dee’s vision flashed red. Blood red. Like the blood that had stained her hands, covered her body, and pooled on the floor when she’d found them.
No.
“But it doesn’t matter.” The bitch’s chin lifted. “You’re dead now.”
So Sunshine had gotten under her skin. “I seem to be breathing just fine.” She didn’t hear any other sounds. That could mean it was just her and Sunshine, or it could mean others waited silently and patiently in the darkness, ready for the perfect moment to attack and kill.
Uh, Jude?
Sunshine had on jeans, strappy sandals, and some kind of light, lacy top. Her smile was broad and flashed lots of teeth.
No fangs, not yet. A vamp’s fangs grew right before they got ready to feed. Just like a vamp’s eye color changed to black when they hunted.
Or when they fucked.
One way to find out what she was dealing with here.
Dee lunged forward, the stake gripped tight in her hand. She struck out, grabbing Sunshine and tossing her ass to the ground. Then she went in for the kill.
The woman never even flinched.
That same vacant smile was on her lips when Dee brought the stake down over her heart. “Dead,” she whispered again.
No fangs. No black eyes. If the woman were a vamp, she’d be fighting for her life. She would have gone into hunting mode instinctively. Not just lay there like a lamb at a slaughter.
Dee froze. The tip of the stake pressed into the lace of Sunshine’s shirt. “Who the hell are you?”
Laughter. Low. In-freaking-sane.
Dee lifted the weapon. Staking a human was not part of her agenda for the night. She rose, never taking her eyes off the nutjob. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”
“No, you are.” The woman climbed slowly to her feet. “All alone. Poor little hunter. Will you beg at the end?”
What the—
“She’s not alone.” Hard, deep.
Not Jude.
Chase.
Sunshine’s lips parted.
“Get out of here,” Dee told her, fighting back the impulse to ram one fist into that thin little nose. “And stop screwing around in shit that you don’t understand.” The woman was obviously some kind of messenger. Most of the hunters at Night Watch had a standing policy of not hurting innocents. Well, Zane wasn’t part of that “most” group. But she didn’t like to hurt humans.