“What?” Talon and she exchanged a glance.
“He mowed through the guards and now he’s dealing with the Black Days coven and Harry the Heretic.”
“Druids are so gauche,” Talon snorted. “Heretic? He wishes. The only thing that guy speaks out against are Pokémon updates.”
“Yeah, well, Harry buried the vamp, and there’s bloode everywhere.”
Riley and Talon hurried after the man who dropped his clothes on the run and turned into a hawk for a better view. Another reason lycans ruled—their magic enabled their clothing to stay with them after they shifted form.
She and Talon found a spot close to the front of the crowd, many magir easily moving aside for Talon and a berserker. They watched Kraft battle tainted magic and Harry the Heretic, who really needed a better name. A large bald man with a party keg centered around his belly, Harry was well-known for proselytizing about nature gods while accepting generous donations in beer and food to take his preaching elsewhere.
Apparently, he had had a little too much tonight, because tangling with a fanger made no sense.
Talon leaned close and said into her ear, “They targeted the vampire under orders. The bazaar has been claimed by a new power. And it’s anoldpower.”
She frowned. “Really?”
Talon nodded.
They watched Kraft burst through the ground, covered in dirt and bloode. He healed fast. Faster than she did, and he seemed to be liking the fight. He tossed the sorcerers around, more gently than he could have, breaking a few limbs. Harry, smartly, left before the vampire could nail him as well. In a blink, Harry vanished, likely through the earth exposed by Kraft’s journey up through it.
Kraft looked around, met her gaze, and smiled. “Nothing keeps me down, you see?”
“Whatever.”
He laughed and brushed the dirt off his clothing.
Had she not realized he was a blood-drinker, she might have thought him a brutish, thoroughly attractive human. It surprised her anew that he appeared so approachable. Oh, she still caught the scent of danger and attitude that he wore like a fine cologne, but he attracted her all the same.
She liked the excitement in his eyes, his fresh-from-battle enthusiasm. He felt decidedly wolfish to her, which she hadn’t expected from a vampire.
It bothered her that shewasn’tbothered by him, when she generally disliked fangers.
Then his entire expression changed. He froze and looked beyond her, and she felt it. A wrongness settled over the atmosphere.
“What the hell?”
“Shit.” Talon yanked her with him and began to back away from Kraft. “We need to get as far away from this as we can.”
Kraft looked like danger personified. His clothing had been torn in places, his sweater sleeve ripped clean off. His exposed left arm was lined with muscle. He looked wild, angry, and lethal, and despite knowing it to be ridiculous, she found him super hot right then. A killer with eyes turned bright red, fangs, and elongating claws. His shaggy hair framed a handsome face, his eyes lit, glowing like fire.
I am so, so not right in the head.
For a second, their gazes met. Intensity throbbed between them. Hot, blazing need.
Or she could be delusional because he might just be fantasizing about drinking her to death.
An unearthly shriek shattered the thick tension, and she watched in shock as another vampire, this one very old, pale, and crooked, rushed past Kraft toward her and Talon. It wore black clothing that hung in tatters from its skeletal frame, plugs of listless gray hair in clumps over its lumpy skull, with thin lips that did nothing to hide the long, yellow fangs caked in blood and whatever foul flesh it had recently taken a bite out of.
She didn’t recognized the thing as alive. Well, as alive as vampires were supposed to be.
It shocked her all over again when it stopped a few feet from her and tilted its head on that thin neck to look at her. Or maybe it stared at Talon, she couldn’t tell. It scrabbled on bare feet that looked like pincers, its toenails long and curled at the tips, also bloodied with the remnants of its last victim. It cocked its head to the other side, as if hearing something she couldn’t.
So close, she could see the veins under its papery skin, the red glow of a hungry vampire absent, its eyes completely black, no iris or sclera to speak of. It had overly long arms and fingers, with three joints in each phalange instead of the normal two. Its claws were tipped black, and she wondered if this was perhaps a zombie in some mutated, freakish form.
“I hunger,” it whispered, its tongue thin, the sibilant hiss of warning constricting around her like coils prepared to crush prey.
“Face me, not her.” Kraft snarled and put himself between her and the creature. Anger radiated like heat from his skin. As he faced his opponent, he didn’t seem to give her a second thought.
