Chapter Five #3
Five centuries have honed my stillness into something most living things interpret as danger. I let her feel it now, let it fill the space between us and settle against whatever composure she is wearing.
“This is my territory, dhampir.” My voice carries nothing that could be called warmth, because I have none to offer her. “You hunt here without permission again… and we will have a problem.”
She tilts her head by a degree that conveys an entire philosophy. “Then I guess we have a problem. Because I’m not asking for permission, vampire.”
Something shifts in the air between us.
Not fear or hostility.
Something… hotter.
It rolls through me sharp and sudden, sparking low under my skin in a way I haven’t felt in a long damn time, especially not in a room littered with bodies she helped put down.
Every instinct I’ve got should be focused on the blood, the danger, the fact that she walked into Kings’ territory armed to the teeth and started killing rogues beside me as if she belonged here.
Instead, I’m standing locked into her stare, and she holds it right back without blinking.
No nerves or instinct to look away from the predator in front of her.
There are creatures three times her age that can’t manage that.
She simply holsters both guns in a single, practiced motion and turns toward the door, glass crunching under her boot as she steps over a rogue she didn’t kill but doesn’t bother looking at.
“I know what you are.” The words come out, and I let them land, let them stop her movement even if they don’t turn her. “Half vampire, half human. You think that makes you special?”
She pauses at the threshold. Looks over her shoulder, and the expression on her face is the first fully unguarded thing she’s shown me. “No,” she says. “It makes me better at killing you than anyone else.” Then she steps through the door.
And with vampire speed… she is gone.
I stay standing in the middle of the wrecked bar longer than I should, surrounded by broken glass, blood, and dead rogues, while something under my skin refuses to settle back into place.
That woman hit something in me.
Something I keep locked down tight for a reason.
And the worst part is, I’m not sure if I want to tear the feeling apart to understand it or chase it to see what happens next.
Five hundred years. I have seen empires fall, saints break, and every permutation of human and inhuman nature laid bare under pressure.
I have not been surprised in those five hundred years.
I am today.
And I am fucking furious about it.
The sound of bikes on the street pulls me back into the room.
Ruckus rolls up with the cleanup crew, his voice carrying before he’s even through the door, assessing the destruction with a low whistle that expresses more than most sentences.
He stops beside me, glances at the room, takes in the expression I’m wearing, and then turns toward the door she left through. “Who the hell was that?”
The word for what she is sits precisely in my mouth. “A goddamn complication,” I say.
Ruckus opens his mouth, and I already know a question is coming, so I shut that shit down by looking past him toward the back of the bar, where two more brothers are hauling equipment through the busted doorway.
One sounds like he’s trying to stomp holes through the floorboards with every step. The other won’t stop muttering under his breath, carrying on nonstop in the kind of running commentary that can wear down a man’s patience in record time.
Rhett and Bennett appear through the back door, each carrying a mop and bucket, looking around the devastated barroom with expressions that represent opposing poles of the same theological spectrum.
Rhett takes in the bodies, the demolished shelves, the bar itself, split in two places, glass glittering across every surface like some violent snowfall. “Jesus Christ.”
Bennett’s head snaps around so fast his halo would spin if he had one. “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain!”
Rhett takes that in, glancing around the trashed bar like he’s trying to find another phrase big enough to cover the level of fucked-up we’re dealing with here. “You’re right.” He draws a breath. “Satan’s asshole, this is a clusterfuck!”
Bennett thinks about it for a second, looking like a man slowly realizing his standards have been beaten to death by the life he chose. “Better,” he says finally. “Still blasphemous, but better.”
I turn, pull my phone to call Coil about the two bodies in the alley, and say without looking at either of them, “Less talking, more cleaning. Don’t forget you need to burn the bodies to make sure they stay dead. And if either of you gets blood on my bike, you’re walking home.”
There is a beat of profound, pointed silence.
Then the sound of a lighter flicking.
I step out into the night air, my jaw tight, the scent of her still threading through my senses in a way I am going to spend a very long time pretending is nothing more than irritation, and stare at the empty street where she was standing thirty seconds ago.
Better at killing me than anyone else.
I don’t like it, but I fucking believe her.