Beneath the Skin

17 AND NEVER WOULD

OUTSIDE DAMASCUS, OR

THE HAPPY BEAVER MOTEL

March 25

PREJEAN AND WALLACE STOPPED. Their hands unlinked, but Wallace didn’t reach for the gun snugged into the back of her jeans. The man behind the wheel of the idling SUV twisted his head around and fixed his shaded gaze on Gillespie.

Gillespie flipped through a mental lineup of Prejean’s known associates and identified the driver: a vamp nomad known as Von McGuinn aka Von Two-Guns. Handy thing, nicknames.

“Gun on the pavement, Wallace!” Gillespie stepped out of his doorway, Glock in both hands and aimed at Prejean’s head.

The vampire swiveled around to face Gillespie, a smooth and simple action so fast, Gillespie never saw him move. Heart thundering in his chest, he kept his Glock aimed at the bloodsucker’s pale forehead.

Gillespie had seen plenty of photos of Prejean, knew the bloodsucker had shattered the vampire drop-dead-gorgeous meter. But neither the photos nor Gillespie’s dispassionate knowledge prepared him for the black-haired beauty now watching him with gleaming eyes; did nothing to prepare him for Prejean’s preternatural grace and deadly allure.

A smile tilted Prejean’s lips for a moment, then vanished.

Captivating—this lean and, most likely, hungry predator.

An image of Rodriguez’s empty eyes and ravaged throat, blood glistening in light reflected from the hall, filled Gillespie’s mind, chilling him like a blast of ice water.

Dry-mouthed, palms sweaty, Gillespie locked his fingers even tighter around the Glock’s grip and kept his focus sharp. His finger flexed against the trigger.

Bloodsucker murdered a man in his own home—an FBI agent to boot.

“Gun on the pavement, Wallace,” Gillespie shouted. “Last warning!”

“Hold your fire,” she called. “I’m complying.” Wallace reached back for her gun, her other hand up and open. A breeze blew strands of red hair across her composed and lovely face.

“Slow and easy, Wallace. Prejean, stay right where you are. Don’t move,” Gillespie barked. “McGuinn, show me your hands!”

As soon as the commands left Gillespie’s lips, headlights lit up the parking lot as a car peeled in from the highway—Miklowitz’s rented Saturn—followed by another vehicle, a Crown Victoria.

Gillespie breathed a sigh of relief. At fucking last. And with that thought, everything went to hell in a handbasket.

The Saturn and Crown Victoria screeched to angled halts, blocking the idling SUV. Miklowitz, Holmes, Kaplan, and others slid low out of the vehicles, ducking behind the open doors, guns lifted. Tight-throated shouts peppered the air.

Prejean lifted a hand to shade his eyes. Winced.

Wallace brought her gun around, swiveling toward the parking lot, and locked both hands around the grip.

The nomad appeared like magic outside the SUV, its driver-side door wide open and ding-ding-dinging. Mustached face grim, he raised the pistol in his hand and fired at the agents taking cover behind the Saturn’s doors.

Muzzle flash, multiple gun cracks, dull thunks as bullets hit metal. Blood sprayed into air thick with the stink of cordite and hot rubber as bullets zipped into flesh. Holmes grunted and sprawled onto the pavement and the nomad staggered back a step.

Prejean lowered his hand and knotted both into fists. His gaze locked with Gillespie’s. The bloodsucker’s coiled muscles unwound. Gillespie pulled the trigger and kept pulling, but Prejean was gone.

A semi hauling steel and cruising at the speed of light slammed into Gillespie, bulldozed him down to the pavement. Blue light swallowed his vision as the back of his skull bounced against the blacktop. The air exploded from his lungs and his Glock flew from his grasp.

Pain and dizziness ricocheted from one side of his skull to the other, banging back and forth, back and forth, in an ever-diminishing cycle.

Weight pressed down on his abdomen, something—knees?—jabbed into his ribs on both sides. Gillespie gasped for air, sucking in the smells of burning leaves and early morning frost. Heat radiated against him, and his survival instincts jerked his arms up and over his throat as his stunned mind belatedly realized that a bloodsucker had flattened him, not a steel-hauling semi.

And not just any bloodsucker, but a designer monster called Dante Prejean.

Hot hands seized Gillespie’s forearms and wrenched them away from his throat. His vision cleared in time to look up into Prejean’s eyes—only a sliver of red-slashed dark brown circled the dilated pupils. Gold light flared in their hungry depths.

What the … ?

Gillespie squirmed and twitched, struggling to bring his knee up in the hope he could jerk free of the vamp’s iron grip and yank his backup weapon free from his ankle holster.

But a very quiet, calm, and resigned part of him knew it didn’t matter. It was too late. Had been too late from the moment he’d locked gazes with Prejean.

He was going to die and not in a good way.

“Hey, Papa, my turn, yeah?” Prejean said. Blood trickled from one nostril. “J’ai faim, motherfucker.” His pale, beautiful face dipped for Gillespie’s throat, lips parting and revealing his sharp, white fangs.

Papa? Was the bloodsucker confused or just toying with him?

Heated lips touched Gillespie’s throat. Twin stabs of pain followed. He renewed his struggle, but couldn’t yank his arms free of Prejean’s steel-fingered hold or roll free of his pinning knees. And his jackhammering, frantic heart would only feed his life away faster.

Gillespie went still.

PAIN JABBED DANTE’S temples, white-hot and ragged. His vision fractured. Pain chiseled away at the boundary between then and now. Wasps droned. Burrowed under his skin.

Don’t put nuthin’ in his mouth. Boy bites.

No escape for you, sweetie.

Prejean, stay right where you are. Don’t move.

The black detective or cop or secret fucking agent twisted underneath Dante, struggling to roll free, sweat beading his face. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes narrowed with effort. Probably the hardest workout the fucker’d had in years./Papa squirms under Dante like a huge fucking worm. The bastard’s heartbeat thunders in Dante’s ears, a primal and compelling sound, drumming up his hunger, his rage from deep within.

“Hey, Papa, my turn, yeah? J’ai faim, motherfucker.”

The cop kicked and pounded and panted./Papa’s heels drum against the dining room floor as blood spurts from his slashed throat. Disbelief widens his eyes.

Just as Dante’s lips touched Papa’s whiskery throat, his fangs piercing the skin, a woman’s scream—raw and anguished—scraped away all other sound. “My baby!”

Dante’s heart skipped a beat. He lifted his head from Papa’s bleeding throat, tore himself away from its hot, intoxicating smell—sweet berries spiced with the juniper-bitter taste of adrenaline—and twisted around.

An Asian woman knelt on the sidewalk in front of room 10’s open door, glass from a bullet-shattered window surrounding her. She clutched a little girl in jeans and a purple sweater against her chest. Rivulets of blood streamed from the back of the girl’s head, glistening in her long, black hair. Her mother wailed, blood smeared on her hands, and soaking into her khaki slacks.

Time paused, a caught breath, as the woman’s cry froze everyone in the parking lot in place. Gunfire stopped. Shouts and yelled orders ceased—except one, issued by an unfamiliar male voice: “Call 911!”

Dante jumped to his feet and moved across the parking lot, past the SUV, and the redhead crouched in front of it, gun in her hands. Dropping to his knees in front of the sobbing woman, he said, “Give her to me.”

“She’s not breathing,” the woman choked out. “Can you help her?”

No one is going to save you. Ever. You can only save yourself.

Liar, liar, goddamned fucking liar.

“Give her to me,” Dante repeated, voice soft. “I’ll do everything I can.” Pain pulsed at his temples. “Ain’t gonna let ’em have her.”

The thick smell of blood filled his nostrils, hitting him like an open-handed slap to the face. Hunger scraped through him. Shivering, he denied it. Pushed it down into the wasp-crawling depths below.

The woman stared at him for a moment, desperation brimming in her tear-reddened eyes, then glanced down at her daughter. She whispered, “Dear God, if you can do anything, anything at all, help her, please.”

Dante scooped the girl’s limp body into his arms. Glass crunched underneath him as he sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, cradling the girl in his lap. Her almond-shaped jade-green eyes stared up at the stars, empty, unseeing. Blood trickled from a hole in her forehead.

She was silent, still. No heartbeat. No breath. All rhythm gone.

Chloe lies on the concrete floor, snow-angeled in a pool of blood.

It’s too late, Dante-angel.

“Nah, it ain’t. I won’t let it be,” Dante said, stroking a finger along one blood-soaked lock of hair. “J’su ici, shhh.” He caught a whiff of cinnamon, cloves, and freezer-frosted ice, a phantom scent.

You won’t save her, you know. You’ll fail.

Yeah, you know what? Fuck you.

Electricity prickled through Dante. Crackled along his fingers. His song swept up from his heart, a dark and intricate aria, dancing in time to the blue flames flickering around his hands—one of which he rested on the girl’s chest, above her ash-filled heart. Blue sparks skipped along her Hannah Montana Comeback Tour sweater.

Closing his eyes, he plucked at the dying DNA refrain within her; strummed the fretted fingerboard of her escaping essence, and reeled it back inside with a burning glissando—rearranging, shaping, composing.

Bowing his head, Dante touched his lips to the girl’s, breathed blue fire into her lungs. Molten music flowed into and illuminated the dark chambers of her heart and swirled among the ashes, a fiery and pulsating rhythm.

He imagined her eyes bright and warm, imagined her hair moonlit and clean, imagined her giggling, a plushie orca tucked under her arm.

Let me go, Dante-angel.

The past uncoiled, then played back in reverse.

Dante crawls away from Chloe, the knees of his jeans dry. The blood that’s smeared and sticky on his hands, his fingers, and beneath his sharp, sharp nails belongs only to the ass-holes sprawled dead on the concrete floor.

Orem floats up from the concrete, the plushie orca’s fur no longer stained with blood but clean-clean-clean, and snuggles into Chloe’s hand again.

The pool of blood surrounding Chloe glides up from the cold floor, beads up and rolls along her skin, trickles away from her hair, all of it pouring back into her slashed throat. The wound zips shut, never was.

Dante’s sharp, sharp fingernails never touch Chloe’s soft throat. Color blossoms in her cheeks, brightens the freckles spilled across her nose. She sits up, her blue eyes wide and scared, but no longer empty.

Dante grabs her and hugs her tight against him. She’s in his arms, warm and alive. It doesn’t happen; he doesn’t kill her. It never happens and never would.

Pain brass-knuckled against Dante’s mind. His breath caught in his throat, rough. His song splintered, then scattered, the complex arrangement not quite complete.

You’ll fail.

Heart hammering against his ribs, Dante kissed Chloe’s forehead. He tasted blood, felt it sticky against his lips. Hunger stirred, hunger once again denied. He breathed in the sweet scent of strawberries and soap.

“Wake up, princess,” he whispered.

A CHILL RIPPLED ALONG Heather’s spine and iced her from the inside out as music, jagged and discordant, prickled against her healed heart for a pulse-pounding moment, then vanished. She stared at the child in Dante’s arms.

Dear God …

The girl’s eyes focused on Dante, no longer empty or unseeing, and no longer jade green, but blue. Long red hair fluttered beside her now-freckled face. Drying blood streaked her new fair skin, but Heather had no doubts that the wounds in the girl’s forehead and the back of her skull had healed.

“My name’s Violet, not Princess,” the little girl said.

Dante lifted his head and shook his hair back from his face. A smile tilted his lips. “Violet? Yeah? T’es sûr de sa? That don’t sound right, chère.”

“It’s right, just ask my mama. Are you an angel?” She touched a finger to Dante’s pale face. Awe lit her sleepy blue gaze. “Your eyes are like gold stars.”

“Ain’t no angel, p’tite.”

“Uh-huh, you are too. Why’re your wings black? You a nighttime angel?”

“Ain’t got wings, princess.” Dante paused, his dark brows slanting down, his expression perplexed. “I’m … nightkind.”

“Nuh-uh, you’re an angel,” Violet declared. She yawned. Her eyes shuttered closed. “Pretty angel …”

Dread settled in Heather’s belly like a bucket of bricks. She doubted Dante was even aware of what he’d done. The taut lines of his body, of his jaw, the sweat beading his forehead, all shouted pain. His words and voice and actions said something else altogether: he was lost in the past.

He’s fighting damned hard to keep himself here and now and with us. But …

Not even twenty-four hours had passed since Lyons and his sister had tried to torture their way past the programming their father had implanted in Dante’s mind, had tried to shove together the fragments of his broken and buried memories.

Not even twenty-four hours since he’d lost Lucien.

I think he’s had all he can take, doll. Heart and mind.

He needs a safe place. And time to heal.

But we’re fresh outta time.

Violet’s mother, still kneeling on the sidewalk and surrounded by blood spatter and glass shards, stared at Dante, her dark eyes wide with horror and shock, both hands pressed against her mouth.

Heather glanced up and saw the same look of stunned disbelief on most of the faces of the people—agents in grimy yellow jumpsuits, staring motel guests—scattered across the motel parking lot and sidewalk. Silence curled through the cordite-smoked air.

Snugging her Browning into the back of her jeans, the barrel hot against her skin, Heather knelt beside Dante, just out of arm’s reach. Blue flames still flickered and snapped around his hands.

“Baptiste,” she said softly. “You hear me?”

He shuddered, blood trickling from his nose, then nodded. “Oui, chérie, I hear you.” He kept his gaze on Violet.

“She’s alive and breathing now, Baptiste. You need to turn off the magic.”

Dante squeezed his eyes shut. “Focus,” he muttered. “Fucking focus.”

Dropping her hands from her mouth, Violet’s mother whispered, “Oh my God. Oh dear God,” her voice rising in volume with each word. “What have you done to her? You changed her! You changed her! Give her to me!”

Panic burned through Heather when she saw the woman lean forward and realized she intended to snatch her daughter away from Dante—from his glowing blue grasp.

“Stop!” she shouted. The woman instinctively froze, her hands still lifted. Her gaze flicked over to Heather. “If you touch him, he might change you too.”

Fear flashed across the woman’s face and she pulled her hands back, knotting them together on her thighs. “I want my daughter back,” she said, her voice quavering. “I want her back right now.”

“I’m working on that,” Heather said, shifting her attention back to Dante and the little girl curled up in his lap.

She wished she could move closer to him, touch him, connect with him in a deeper, more immediate way than just speaking. She worried that words alone wouldn’t be enough. But as long as blue fire flared around his hands, she couldn’t risk it.

“You still listening, Baptiste? We’re at a motel in Damascus—”

“Put the child down now!”

The agent that Dante had knocked down stood a couple of yards away, his face ashen and his glasses askew. Blood trickled along one side of his throat. He held his gun in both hands—shaking hands—the barrel aimed at Dante’s head.

“Back the fuck off, asshole,” Von growled. “You ain’t helping the situation. Let the lady do her thing.”

A muscle ticked in the agent’s jaw, but he didn’t say anything else. His gun, however, remained aimed at Dante’s head.

“Keep talking, doll.”

Heather drew in a steadying breath. “We’re in Damascus, Oregon, Dante. You, me, Von, and Annie, and we’re headed home. The girl you’re holding is not Chloe. Your princess died eleven years ago.”

“Eleven … ? No, it just happened,” Dante said, his eyes still closed. Blood from his nose streaked a dark and glistening trail down his lips and chin. “But I rewound everything, took it all back. Chloe’s safe. Orem too.”

Heather stared at Dante, another bucketful of bricks dropping into her belly. Dante wasn’t just remembering horrific bits of his past, he was reliving them. Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them away.

“You can’t rewind the past,” she said, hating each word as it slipped past her lips. “Chloe’s dead and you can never take that back. It happened.”

Dante’s muscles coiled and flexed as if each word pounded into him like a steel-knuckled fist. His arms tightened around sleeping Violet.

Heather was fairly certain that Violet had died the moment the bullet had slammed into her forehead. Her eyes had been empty. Dante had done more than save her life, he’d brought her back.

Maybe Violet could’ve been resuscitated with CPR, a defibrillator, and drugs and returned to her body; a near-death experience. Not out of the realm of possibilities.

But Dante had rested a hand on Violet’s chest and breathed into her.

He is the never-ending Road.

“You saved Violet, Baptiste. She’s alive—here, now— because of you. Give her back to her mother. Let her go.”

Dante sucked in a breath, then opened his eyes. He looked at Heather. The gold light had vanished. The blue flames engulfing his hands winked out. “J’su ici,” he said, voice a husky whisper.

“Monster! Give me my daughter!”

Fury scorched all other emotion from the woman’s face as she leaned forward and grabbed Violet. Dante opened his arms and the woman jerked her changeling daughter free.

Violet awakened, rubbed at her eyes. “Mama?”

Heather rose to her feet and held up a wait-and-listen hand, palm out. “He can change your daughter back,” she said, hoping to hell it was true. “All we need is a little quiet and—”

“He can change her back?” A ribbon of hope curled through the woman’s voice. “Just like the way she was before … before—”

“I believe so,” Heather said. “As soon as things quiet down.”

“Ma’am,” the man Heather figured for SB, not FBI, interrupted. “I need you and your child to go to the office until the situation here is contained.”

“But he can change her back,” Violet’s mother protested.

“You’re in danger here,” the SB agent said, voice strained. “You’re in the middle of a firefight. You and your daughter risk being shot—again—or becoming hostages. Get the hell out of here.”

“Wait,” Heather said, “how about a time-out until Dante’s restored Violet back to herself? Then—”

“Then nothing,” he replied. His gaze remaining on Heather, though he directed his words to Violet’s mother. “You’re asking to give your daughter back to a bloodsucking vampire who’s just angling to find a way outta the mess he landed himself in. Get your daughter out of here before I have you arrested for endangering a child. Now!”

Bewilderment flashed across the woman’s face and Heather could just imagine her thoughts: Did he just say bloodsucking vampire?

With a teary glance at Heather, the woman stood, then hurried across the parking lot, Violet clutched against her. Heather watched as Violet and her mother disappeared inside the motel office. She hoped Dante would have a chance to undo her daughter’s physical transformation into Chloe.

A peripheral flash of movement followed by the crackle of glass under boot soles told Heather that Dante had risen to his feet. She looked at him, and the pain and raw grief she saw pooled in his dark eyes tore at her.

Chloe’s death just happened for him.

“You and Chloe never stood a chance against them. You were just kids,” Heather whispered, stepping up beside him. His fevered heat baked against her.

He looked away, blinking, his hands clenching into fists. “I fucked up.”

“Hold it right there, Prejean. Move again and I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

And with those words, the détente created by a dying or dead little girl ended.

Adrenaline surged electric through Heather’s veins, sparked clear and cool in her mind. She reached for the Browning tucked into the back of her jeans.

Fresh outta time.

GILLESPIE TIGHTENED HIS DOUBLE-HANDED grip on his Glock, his palms sweating despite the cool, moist air chilling his face and hands. Clicks and ka-chunks echoed all around him as guns swung up and fresh rounds were chambered.

“Name ain’t Prejean,” the vampire said. He wiped at the blood trickling from his nose with the back of one pale hand.

“I don’t give a shit what your name is,” Gillespie said. “On the ground. Hands behind your head and interlace your fingers.”

“Blow me.”

“We don’t have to do this,” Wallace said, her gun aimed at the center of Gillespie’s forehead. “More innocent people might get hurt or killed. Two of your agents are already down.”

“That’s rich coming from a woman who stood by while her bloodsucking squeeze murdered an FBI agent in his own home,” Gillespie said.

“She had nothing to do with that,” Prejean said, voice taut. “That was all me.”

“Good to know. If you wanna save lives, Wallace, surrender.”

Wallace’s attractive face was calm, resolute. “We can’t—”

Her words were cut off as Prejean staggered against her. Concern flashed across her face. She unwrapped a hand from the grip of her gun to help brace the vampire upright, but he slipped from her grasp. Fell to his knees.

Gillespie adjusted his aim at Prejean’s head, his heart jackhammering against his ribs. Sweat dampened his shirt at the small of his back. And at this very moment, he’d sell his soul without an ounce of regret for just one shot of Jack Daniel’s.

Prejean’s golden eyes. The blue flames from his hands engulfing the little girl.

What the hell had Prejean done to that kid? How had he done it? How was such a thing—turning a little girl into someone else—even possible?

Not just a bloodsucker and murderer, Dante Prejean. But whatever the hell he was, he definitely wasn’t what the kid claimed him to be.

Are you an angel?

Images of the white stone angels at the Wells site scrolled through Gillespie’s mind. The hair on the back of his neck prickled. His finger twitched against the Glock’s trigger. Take the goddamned shot.

But before Gillespie could decide whether or not to shoot an unarmed man—he’s got fangs, speed, and strength, he’s NOT unarmed—the vampire keeled over onto the glass-strewn sidewalk, his body spasming with mind-numbing speed and violence, his black hair whipping across the pavement.

“Shit!” Wallace dropped to her knees beside Prejean. “Von!”

Gillespie stared, amazed. A seizure? He’d had no idea vampires were subject to physical ills or mental short-circuits. He relaxed his finger against the Glock’s trigger.

In a blur of motion, the nomad vamp, Nightwolf colors on the back of his worn leather jacket, appeared on the sidewalk beside Wallace and Prejean, a zippered black bag in his hand.

A gunshot cracked through the night as one of Gillespie’s men fired in a belated response to the nomad’s unexpected movement.

Back turned, McGuinn flipped off whoever had fired, then knelt. He unzipped the bag, pulling out a syringe and vial.

Crisscrossed headlights shafted light across the trio on the sidewalk, spotlighted Prejean’s limb-twisting spasms. Fresh blood from the vampire’s nose and mouth sprinkled the pavement.

“Chief, what the hell is he? How did he change that little girl?” Kaplan asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Kid took a bullet square in the forehead, Chief. She should be dead.”

“Doesn’t mean she was dead,” Gillespie murmured. “I’ve seen people chat about baseball statistics with a crow-bar planted in their skulls.”

“But how do you explain that the kid’s no longer Asian?”

Gillespie pulled his gaze from Prejean and looked at the field agent. She’d trotted from the dubious safety of the bullet-pocked car door she’d crouched behind to join Gillespie on the sidewalk, her Sig Sauer down at her side. Several strands of blonde hair had worked free of her ponytail and now curved along her jawline.

“I can’t,” Gillespie said, meeting her troubled gaze. “I haven’t a clue how he changed her.”

“She called Prejean an angel. Do you think … I mean, could he be—”

Gillespie’s phone beedle-beedled and his heart launched itself into his throat. Christ! I’m wound up tighter than a pig’s tail. Pulling his cell from his pants pocket, he glanced at the incoming number. Underwood. A grim satisfaction curled through him. For once, he had good news to report.

“For now, Prejean’s a murderer. Initiate the arrest,” he said to Kaplan, nodding at the trio on the sidewalk. “But not alone. Shoot if they resist.”

Kaplan nodded, her expression unhappy. She jogged back to the Saturn and the surviving agents.

Gillespie answered the SOD’s call. “Ma’am, good news. We have them—Prejean and Wallace. No sign of Lyons, though.”

“Release them,” Underwood said, her voice flat.

Underwood wasn’t given to jokes or pranks, so Gillespie could only assume he’d misheard. “Ma’am?”

“I told you to release them.”

Or maybe she’d misheard. “We located Prejean and Wallace. We have them.”

“Perhaps the third time will be the charm. Release. Them. The official search for them has been terminated. That order comes from the director himself.”

“Ma’am, no disrespect, but have you been drinking?”

Underwood laughed, a soft and humorless sound. “No, Sam, I’ve never needed booze to bolster me when things unhinge. Release Prejean and Wallace.”

Gillespie heard a click as Underwood broke the connection—hanging up on him as per the norm. And just like that, his good news had turned into a pile of stinky shit. Acid churned in his stomach, burning its way up his throat.

Gillespie thumbed END, then tucked the cell back into his pocket. He rubbed a hand over his scalp. What the hell had happened at HQ? Why would Director Britto call off the hunt for Prejean, Wallace, and Lyons?

He pondered disobeying the order, pondered telling his agents to open fire—shoot to kill—and end his career. He sighed. Pulling a half-empty roll of Tums from his shirt pocket, he popped the remaining tablets into his mouth, then crumpled up and tossed the empty wrapper. The chalky, mock-fruit flavored Tums masked the sour taste of acid on his tongue.

“We’ve been ordered to release them,” Gillespie called. “Back off.”

His agents, semicircled around the trio on the sidewalk, froze. Relief washed over Kaplan’s face—and not just hers, Gillespie noted. Several other field agents seemed to regard Prejean with something dangerously close to awe.

“What the fuck? Chief, that can’t be right,” Miklowitz protested, turning around to face Gillespie. “They shot Holmes and Cantnor and—”

“And that’s who we need to take care of right now. Have medics been called?”

“Yeah, but …”

“Trust me, I don’t like this any more than you do, but this comes from the top—release them.”

A scowl darkened Miklowitz’s face. Jamming his gun back into his shoulder holster, he jogged back to his part-ner’s sprawled body and hunkered down beside him.

Prejean’s seizure had ended or maybe he’d been pumped full of vamp meds, Gillespie didn’t know and really didn’t care. His stomach tossed more acid up his throat and he thought of the beer in his room growing warmer with each passing moment.

The nomad gathered Prejean into his arms and rose to his feet in a smooth, graceful movement. He carried Prejean to the SUV. Eased him into the back, then climbed into the driver’s seat.

Wallace stood also, her gun at her side, barrel pointed at the pavement. She turned around to face Gillespie. She studied him for a long moment, her eyes shadowed and un-readable. A breeze fluttered through her red hair.

“You’re SB, not Bureau, right?”

“That’s right.”

“They’re lying to you,” she said. “Ask about Bad Seed.”

“I know about Bad Seed,” Gillespie replied. “I know what Prejean is.”

Wallace shook her head. “I doubt that.” Gun still in hand, she trotted to the SUV and jumped into the backseat beside Prejean’s prone body, closing the door after her.

Wallace’s sister, the girl with triple-colored hair, poked her head up from the back, then slithered over into the front passenger seat. Gillespie guessed that she’d played it smart and had huddled on the floorboards during the firefight.

Gillespie watched the SUV pull out of the bullet casing–littered parking lot and peel onto the dark highway. His stomach knotted as he remembered the feel of Prejean’s fangs piercing his throat.

I know what Prejean is.

I doubt that.

Thinking of the little Asian girl with jade-green eyes and black hair and how Prejean, with blue light dancing around his hands, had transformed her into a girl with red hair and freckles left him cold.

Gillespie had a feeling Wallace was right.

And that scared the living daylights out of him.