The bone popped, and I yelled.
The guy was fast—vampire fast—darting around and behind me, his hand over my mouth, arm across my neck.
“Shit,” he said. “Shit. I didn’t want...”
I was burning under the waves of pain. I could feel the tension in his body, smell the sweat. I raised my boot to stomp on his foot.
“Brogan! The luck!” Abbi yelled. For someone so small, she had a set of lungs on her.
The vampire released and pushed me all in one motion. I spun toward him, but he was already four yards away and running.
Cowboy. I got the impression of worn jeans, boots, a tucked-in western-style shirt. His hair was brown, clean cut. Good-enough-looking guy made greater from the glamor of the vampiric kind.
Just before he disappeared around the block, he held up his hands—in what? Surrender? Apology?
I wanted to kick the shit out of him.
But between one blink and the next, he was gone.
Fucking vampires are too fucking fast.
My heart thundered, my breath dragged ragged and hard.
Abbi!
I tucked my broken wrist against my chest and ran out of the space between buildings where he’d dragged me.
Electric shocks jolted up my arm with each step, lightning searing stitches through my shoulder, my spine, my skull. Every breath hurt.
I ran harder.
“Abbi!” I rounded the corner and barreled into the little space fenced in on three sides with a concrete pedestal in the center.
Abbi stood on her tiptoes, her palms spread on the top of the pedestal. Franny was beside her, hand under her arm to help stabilize the girl.
“I haven’t licked it yet,” Abbi said, “so I don’t have luck, but Franny told me all about it. Did you know the one in Ireland is bigger than this one because it’s the mommy stone and this is only a wee baby stone?”
“Abbi,” I breathed, relieved she was still here, still whole, unhurt, babbling and bouncing from too much sugar.
“I wanted to wait so you could see...” She let go of the pedestal.
“You hurt your hand.” She rushed to me, touching my elbow. “Did you fall?” Then her eyes went wider. “You got hurt.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Just a sprain. We have a wrap back in the motel. Lick the stone, Abbi. I think we need that luck.”
“I know what did that,” she whispered.
I didn’t doubt she could tell I’d been jumped by a vampire.
A cowboy vampire who had broken my wrist and run off like he’d stepped into the wrong room filled with garlic, sunlight, and wooden stakes.
It didn’t make sense. Things that wanted to hurt, hurt. And vampires were always things that wanted to hurt.
“Are you all right?” Franny asked. “You’re pale as a sheet.”
“It’s fine, I’m fine.”
“That wrist?” The feathers in her hair lifted in the breeze. “Mr. Gauge. I know a very good general practitioner who could see you.”
