Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 82480 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 330(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82480 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 330(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
The quiet thump was so muffled that, had all her senses not been fine-tuned with sudden anxiety, she might not have heard the sound. But as Darius turned his head toward the closed bedroom door, she was sure she hadn’t imagined it.
A second, muffled bumping noise made her heart start to pound. “Someone’s in the house,” she whispered.
And that was when she realized—
“Oh, God, I didn’t lock up!” She went to get off the bed. “I didn’t lock the front door after you came in—”
Darius caught her wrist and pulled her back. “You stay here. Do not leave this room, do you understand? No matter what you hear, you stay here—”
“What are you going to do?”
Like she had to ask?
Surging off the bed, Darius yanked his pants back on and went to his jacket. As he took out a handgun, he muttered, “Don’t worry, I’m perfectly legal.”
“We should call the police.”
“Give me a minute to find out what it is.” He went to the door. “Stay here.”
As Anne watched him go, every instinct told her to pick up the phone. Call the CPD downtown. The local sheriff. Hell, call the detective(s)—either one or both. Gonzalez or Sulley. She had both their cards…
Instead, she stayed where she was, frozen in her bed, an empty glass of milk clutched tightly in her hands.
The prayer she put up to God made no sense, the entreaty a gobbled-together mess of words covering a multitude of different panics. She was positively dizzy from fear.
As well as the sense that something very, very bad was about to happen.
* * *
The second Darius stepped out of Anne’s bedroom, he smelled it: baby powder and the stink of death combined. For a split second, his brain refused to process the reality that his enemy was in her house. Somehow, someway, a fucking lesser was inside, even though he had no idea how they could have tracked him dematerializing—
Down below, a shadow wheeled by at the foot of the stairs, the dark pattern thrown by someone moving through the living room, just out of view.
Darius briefly closed his eyes. Goddamn it, he’d ghosted out from an open window at the back of his house. Even if some slayers had been staking his location, they wouldn’t have known where he’d ended up—
Creak.
Click.
Abruptly, things got a little darker.
Creak. Click. Creak…
The slayer was going through the rooms and turning off the lights, one by one—and there was no hesitation, as if he knew where the lamps and switches were located. And then a voice, soft, but carrying far enough for Darius to hear:
“Anne, oh, Annnnne. You’ve left out a mess here in the kitchen.”
A warning rode up the back of Darius’s neck. Anne?
How the fuck did that slayer know her name—
Something simmered just below his consciousness, something that he knew he should remember.
“I always told you… open jars must be capped properly and put away. Peanut butter and jelly, a loaf of bread left out? Tsk. Tsk…”
Harnessing every protective urge in his body, Darius focused himself and dematerialized down to the first floor. And the instant he re-formed, there was a quick shift in the kitchen, a shadowy figure spinning around to face him—
What the fuck, Darius thought as he recognized the man immediately.
And what do you know, Bruce McDonaldson had the same response, the man pulling a double take.
Except… he was no longer a man, was he.
“You’re a vampire?” the new lesser said with confusion. “And what the hell are you doing in this house—”
Darius pointed his gun at his enemy. “You picked the wrong team, asshole.”
And that was when it came back to him. In a quick flash of memory, he recalled being at the induction site at that farmhouse… and going through some of the clothes that had been left behind. He’d picked up a suit jacket and some kind of instinct had immediately fired—but he hadn’t been able to place it at the time. Now things made sense.
He’d caught Bruce’s scent on the coat. That was what had registered. Except his brain had refused to process the implications of it all because hey, what were the chances that Anne’s ex would become one of the Omega’s new recruits?
Then again, the guy had told her he was destined for bigger things. Usually that just meant snagging a better job, however, not a complete immortal rewiring by a metaphysical source of unfathomable evil.
Fucking hell, Darius thought as the slayer ducked into another room and turned off the final lamp.
From out of the darkness, a chuckle weaved through the still air. “Have you told her what you are, vampire?”
As the man—lesser—kept talking, Darius glanced out the nearest window. The neighbors were close. If he pulled his trigger, it wasn’t going to take long for the cops to get called. Not the kind of peanut gallery he was looking for, especially when there was about to be a stinky, black-oil mess to clean up.