Chapter 28
Ouch.
This was the worst hangover ever. Forget a knife through my skull—someone was jackhammering against my head.
I made an attempt to swallow, but it only hurt my parched mouth.
Blinking took even more effort. My eyelids felt like they had weights holding them down.
Slowly, the room came into focus. I was lying on something hard.
I tried to move, but my arms wouldn’t listen to my brain.
After several attempts, I gave up. The most I could manage was wiggling my fingers.
Exhausted, I closed my eyes for a moment, and darkness swept in to claim me once again.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed before I came to. My head was still foggy, but significantly less so than it had been the first time. My throat was so dry that I worried I’d tear something if I tried to swallow. This time, I was able to make my arms move—though it required immense effort.
I was in the supply closet of the bar, lying in the middle of the floor.
I pulled myself into a sitting position and pressed my palms against my temples in a desperate attempt to ward off the pain.
I looked up once my eyes focused, and instantly regretted it.
The fluorescent light bore down on me, aggressively bright.
What the hell happened?
Soft voices filtered in through the door, and my memory started to return. My argument with James, then drinks with Dani…
Dani.
My first thought was that I’d had some alcohol-induced dream where she’d drugged me and confessed to hunting James. Cut me some slack: it’d been a rough week.
It all came back to me, though. She had the same necklace as Luke. Were they part of some cult? I refused to accept that vampire hunting was an actual career.
Where was James?
Fuck that—they’d probably drugged me to lure him here. I needed to get out on my own.
I’d like to say I scrambled to my feet, but with my legs feeling like jelly, a baby giraffe had more grace.
I eventually found my bearings and took slow, shuffling steps toward the door, trying to make as little noise as possible.
I rested against the door as quietly as I could, pressing my ear to the wood.
I couldn’t hear individual words, but I determined there were two people talking.
Closing my eyes, I sketched out a plan. I was in the storage closet, which was across from the employee bathroom next to James’s office. If I managed to get out of the closet and dart into James’s office—assuming the damn thing was unlocked—I could likely clamber out the window.
I paused, my hand on the doorknob. Leaving the closet could very well get me killed.
Then again, staying there would get me killed anyway.
I held my breath and turned the knob, easing the door open.
I cautiously poked my head into the hallway.
The voices were clearer now, and came from the direction of the bar itself.
I couldn’t see anything from my position, but since I’d heard a second voice earlier, I had to assume someone might be hiding around the corner.
I looked both ways, then stepped out. I could see into the main room, but had no idea where Dani was positioned—or if she could see me.
Daylight poured through the glass in the front of the bar, which meant that I’d been out all night.
I took step after careful step, hoping the floor didn’t creak under my weight.
“This wouldn’t have happened if you’d taken him out when you had the chance!”
I froze halfway to James’s office.
“This wouldn’t have happened if you could keep your dick in your pants!”
“Hey, I didn’t plan to get a crush on the guy’s mate.” That second voice belonged to Luke.
Wait… did he say mate?
“We’re not throwing around the ‘M’ word,” came Dani’s reply. “As far as I know, they’re just sleeping together—will you focus? He couldn’t have been that good in bed.”
“Shut up!” Luke again. “I thought I heard something.”
“I gave him enough sedatives to keep a horse under—you shouldn’t hear anything.”
With the last few words, Dani’s voice came closer. My heart rate skyrocketed, and I darted across the hall to James’s office door, shoving at the doorknob. My heart sank when it didn’t turn.
It was locked.
I spun, rushing back to the storage closet, but I wasn’t quick enough.
Dani called out to Luke as I stepped over the threshold and into the room.
Footsteps thundered across the space and down the hallway.
I swung the door shut behind me, grimacing as I heard a grunt and someone crashed into it.
Judging by the way they easily bounced off the wood, it was Dani.
I threw my weight against the door when it buckled again. I wasn’t a small guy, but I wasn’t exactly at peak strength either. Someone shouldered the door, and I heard wood crack. It wouldn’t hold for long. I winced as the second thud caused the wood to splinter.
My head was pounding. With every crash of the body against the door I was met with an equal thump in my head. My back to the door, I pressed the heels of my hands into my temples, desperate for the pain to stop. Both of them were shouting on the other side, but I couldn’t make out the words.
The ache in my head grew so intense that my vision blurred. I swayed on my feet, which gave them the leverage they needed to burst through. I was thrown forward, too fast to catch myself. Searing pain shot through my head as it connected with the metal edge of a shelf, and the room went dark again.
“I can’t believe you didn’t restrain him!”
“I can’t believe you slept with him!”
“Shut up! Christ, you two are worse than children.”
Silence fell over the room. I forced my eyes open. Dani and Luke were standing there, watching me with thunderstruck expressions. Oh. I’d just told them to shut up.
I hadn’t thought the pain in my head could get any worse.
Turns out I’d been very, very wrong. Only this time it was accompanied by the feeling of something stuck to my forehead.
Nausea bubbled up, and I did my best to swallow it down.
I tried to cover my mouth with my hand, only to find that they’d been bound behind my back.
I wriggled, feeling another restraint digging into my stomach and two more encircling my ankles.
“You’ve proven more trouble than I expected,” I heard Dani say.
I blinked and the room came into focus. We were in the main bar area, and Dani—who sported a swollen, reddened nose, probably from smashing face first into the door earlier—was reaching over to a table, where a silver dagger gleamed.
I squeezed my eyes shut again, as if that would stop what was coming.
I felt more than heard her stand behind me.
She grabbed a fistful of my hair and wrenched my head back, making me cry out.
“Dani, stop!”
With the cold metal of the dagger against my throat, I risked opening my eyes. Luke stood in front of me, arms folded over his chest. “Remember, you said we need him alive to lure James here.”
“I also said not to mention that fact in front of him,” she growled. A moment later, she sighed. “I was just making sure he’d cooperate with us. He’s notoriously stubborn.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as the dagger clattered to the floor next to my feet. Dani began pacing in front of me. She held something in her hand, but I couldn’t see what it was. “Where is he, anyway? I hoped he’d be here by now.”
That makes two of us.
“Dani?” God, my throat felt like gravel. Her steps halted. For a second, something flashed in her eyes. Something like pity or regret. It lasted only a quick second, then she masked it. “What did you mean before?”
“When?”
I swallowed. Well, I tried to. “You said you almost had James.”
Dani scoffed, and for a second I thought she’d brush me off and return to her pacing, but instead she grabbed a chair and dragged it across the room.
The object in her hand finally came into view as she sat facing me: a silver crucifix.
It was at least eight inches long and it looked heavy.
Even more worrisome, its bottom edge had been sharpened into a point that reminded me eerily of a stake…
She began to speak, pulling my eyes back to her face.
“The only reason I started working at this bar was because of him. I’ve been hunting him for the last decade.
Five years ago, I lost track of him on the West Coast. I’ve never been a huge fan of the whole ‘keep your friends close’ motif, but in this case it worked.
Shift by shift we grew closer, and one night he confided in me.
Granted, he thought I was too drunk to remember, but he didn’t deny it when I approached him about it the next day.
The arrangement was his idea. I caught a nasty stomach flu, and he offered to heal me.
I didn’t have anything to lose: I’d finally start getting my hands on the concrete proof our boss needed, and I wouldn’t feel like I was dying anymore.
“You showed up right around the time it was supposed to end. Then he—” she glared at Luke, “—got sloppy and showed his brother all of our evidence.”
“I didn’t show him the evidence!” Luke snapped. Then he wilted. “He found it,” he said in a small voice.
Dani clicked her tongue. “Either way, we had to reevaluate. If James wound up murdered, Kian might tip someone off. We needed it to look like an accident, and while we planned, you two started a relationship.”
“So I became your target?”
“We hunt monsters, Ryder, we aren’t monsters ourselves. We’re meant to protect people—even sympathizers like you. You weren’t supposed to be there when we struck. We tried to ensure you were distracted, but again, someone’s sloppy.” She threw a disgusted look at Luke.
I connected the dots. “That’s why you had Hannah followed.”
Luke huffed. “I was afraid she’d recognize me. Besides, I’m not the one who tripped the alarm.”
“He’d never set the damn thing before. Unlike the fire door.” At her pointed look, Luke flushed. Dani picked up the artifact in her lap, turning it over in her fingers. “All I had to do was start a fire. All of his vampire speed would amount to nothing in the face of flames.”
I wanted more information, but my throat had reached its limit. Dani picked up her weapon and started pacing again. Just then, I thought I heard a shuffling sound from one of the back rooms. I glanced at Dani, then side-eyed Luke. Neither of them seemed to have noticed.
My eyelids grew heavy again. I fought to keep them open, to hold my head up.
I didn’t want to lose sight of my captors.
I noticed Luke was fidgety, even more so than Dani.
His eyes flicked back and forth, and he looked on the verge of bolting at any second.
That gave me a little bit of hope. If he fled, I was sure I could take Dani on myself.
But first I had to remove the restraints.
All three of us snapped to attention at the sound of glass shattering. Well, their heads snapped—I gingerly turned mine and still almost vomited everywhere.
“Keep an eye on him,” Dani said to Luke, then took off down the hall.
She couldn’t have been gone longer than a second when I felt something tugging at the ropes binding me to the chair. Luke had moved behind me.
“What are you doing?”
“Helping you,” he whispered. “I can’t undo them all the way, but they’re loose enough for you to free yourself.”
“Dani’s not going to be happy.”
“She’s never happy.”
When he straightened, I could wiggle a little more in the chair. The knots around my wrists felt loose. “Why are you helping me?”
Luke rounded the chair to pick up the dagger on the floor at my feet, then stood in front of me, giving me a one-shouldered shrug. “Maybe I have a bit of a crush on you.”
“What’s going to happen to you?”
Dani’s voice called from the back. “Luke!”
He glanced down the hallway unhappily. “I’m getting out of here. I’m done.” He eyed me. “Don’t suppose you’d come with me? No, never mind.” He gave me one last radiant smile. “Take care of Kian.” Without another word, he took off after Dani.
I stared after his departing back, then flinched so hard that I nearly knocked the chair backward as James materialized in front of me.
“You’re here!” I hissed.
In the midst of everything, he gave me that smile that made my legs weak—when they weren’t already made of spaghetti.
He dropped to his knees. “Of course I’m here, love. Let’s get you out of here while they’re distracted with that brick I sent through my window.”
I threatened to slip back into unconsciousness as he worked at the tie around my hands, stopping to press a quick kiss to my cheek as it fell away.
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
James sat back on his heels, working at my ankles while I fought with the cord around my middle. “Why wouldn’t I—”
James fell back with a grunt. I looked up, coming face to face with Dani and her silver crucifix, now stained with blood.