“Right then.” Bennett blew out a deep breath as he searched the less than lively street around them. “So, any ideas how we’re going to track down who did this?”
“Yeah, I got one,” Valin replied, carefully stepping around the stain.
“What’s that?”
“Find the prey and you’ll find the hunter.” He curved his lips up in a semblance of a smile. “Let’s go find some bad guys.”
“Really, Aaron, you don’t have to stay,” Gabriella said, emphasizing the words with a full-on stare down. It was the umpteenth time she’d told him to leave, and the umpteenth method she’d tried, but she’d yet to have any success convincing her self-assigned tagalong to leave her side. His lack of compliance was really beginning to put a chip in her ego of badass-extraordinaire, not to mention a throb in her fangs.
“I’ll stay. Unless you want to try and make me leave.” He flashed a grin, showing off the chip he’d gotten in his front tooth last week when she’d attempted to do just that. Gabby ground her fangs against her lower eyeteeth. Tempting, but then she’d have to explain to Jacob why she couldn’t seem to keep his little brother in one piece.
Sighing, she turned her attention back to the almost deserted street. From here, in this fenced-off playground, she had a great view in both directions, including the old restaurant-turned-club down the way. In another time, or perhaps just another lifetime, she might’ve raised an eyebrow at having a playground so close to a club that catered to the depraved, but with the things she’d lived through and seen, it came nowhere near a WTF on her radar screen. Besides, it really was the perfect location to scope out the club. A good hoodie, some torn jeans, and boots, and as long as she didn’t get close enough for a face-to-face, she could still pass for a high school delinquent looking to score some on the teeter-totter.
Too bad Aaron in his camo pants and clean-cut crop of brown hair ruined the image.
Maybe she should just bite him and get it over with. It would be one way of deterring him from following her everywhere.
She swallowed, jerking her gaze away when she realized she’d focused on his neck. Not that it helped. Short of cutting off her ears, there was no way to ignore the pounding heartbeat still throbbing against her eardrums.
“Eats garlic. Probably tastes bad. And who would fix the base’s computer?”
Aaron twisted his head, forehead bunched. “What are you muttering on about?”
“All the reasons I shouldn’t eat you for dinner.”
His brown eyes widened, but then he laughed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Good one. But I’m still not leaving.”
She shrugged. “It’s your jugular.”
And okay, even saying that as a joke was bad, because as he shook his head, chuckling, she noticed she was running her tongue over her fangs.
Goddamn. Would a vampire just show up already? She was getting really sick of scoping out club after club looking for action. This one had all the traits of being prime pickings for the prey she hunted. Its patrons certainly bought into the vamp culture. Hell, some even filed their teeth. It was the type of place she hated—she had no respect for anyone who craved the life she’d been forced to live—and she would have walked away in a heartbeat but for one thing: She needed a replacement. Her last unwitting spy in the coven had gone blip and fallen off the radar, which meant the blood bond had been destroyed and the vamp was dead. Ergo she had no fucking idea what the vamps’ newest leader, Stephan, planned to do next. Which was not cool, given his ultimate goal appeared to be capturing and turning as much of the gifted population of the city as possible, presumably to make his own little army of super-powered vampires.
Gabby couldn’t let that happen. Ganelon, with his army of demons and merkers, was bad enough. Though maybe if she were lucky, really lucky, Lucifer’s right-hand man and general would catch wind of Stephan’s delusions of grandeur, take offense, and wipe him out before he could complete his recruitment plan.
And why don’t you wish for hell to freeze over while you’re at it, Gabby?
Aaron shifted, arching his back. “Tell me again why we don’t wait inside? Maybe get a drink?”
“That’s just it. I’d want a drink.”
He narrowed his eyes, for the first time looking at all concerned. “You are looking a little peaked. Have you…you know…lately?”
She glared at him. Really? For three months she’d worked with the small militia of gifted humans that Jacob had enlisted, turning them from a hodgepodge bunch of wannabe warriors into the well-oiled fighting machines they were now. And yeah, perhaps they weren’t quite ready to step into their Paladin cousins’ shoes and take on Ganelon’s army yet, but they could at least hold their own in the smaller skirmishes against the fangy recruiters out there. Which was a far cry from when Gabby had rescued Jacob and a handful of his groupies from shit creek back at the end of the summer.
Jacob, ever the opportunist, had immediately tried to convert Gabby to his cause. The idea of leaving a legacy behind when she died—something more than her former stepdaddy and mommy dearest had planned for her—had sounded appealing. So Gabby agreed to some part-time help. The only condition being that no one ever, ever, ever pry into her personal life—past or present—and that included the who, what, where, when, or how she took care of her…needs. So far no one had broken that rule. Until now.
“Because, if you…you know…if you needed to…” Aaron swallowed.
“I don’t feed from humans,” she snarled, then pretty much ruined it by flashing her fangs as she did. Way to go, Gabby.
His mouth cracked, turning up into a boyish grin. “No problem then. Considering I’m not one hundred percent human, right?”
She gave him a penetrating look…and fell into his thoughts. An image of her, riding him, then bending down to sink her teeth into his neck…
“Oh, God, Aaron, stop!” She clamped down on her shields, cutting off her accidental intrusion into his mind.
“What? What did I do? Am I doing it again?” He glanced around, his brow puzzling up at the unchanged landscape.
“Don’t. Don’t even think it, much less say it.”
He snapped his mouth closed, color flooding his cheeks as he finally clued in to what had happened. He turned away, doing his best to at least pretend he was focused on the street on the other side of the chain-link fence as he attempted to shore up his shields.
Gabby squirmed, trying to ease the prickling sensation riding through her limbs that urged her to get up and run from the graphic images that still coated the inside of her skull after that little mind bump. But that wasn’t going to help, not when she’d have to face him again later. And it wasn’t like this was the first time it had happened, either.
“Listen. I’m sorry. I really am. But a, it wouldn’t be safe and b, you’d regret it after.”
“Isn’t that my concern, not yours?” he asked softly, his voice filled with the longing she’d been valiantly trying to ignore and couldn’t now that he’d said something.
Damn him. She didn’t want to do this. She normally didn’t give a crap what people thought of her, but she wasn’t cruel. Even so, short of the timelessly detested I’m just not interested, what could be said? Not to take it personally, that she didn’t think she could ever feel that way about anyone? And even if she could scrape up some feelings for him, that any sort of intimacy they shared would be a one-way street? Both succubus and vampire sex, at their core, were about power and control. Even before she’d been turned she’d been taught that.