Silas burst forward, kicking open the door. “Stop!” He chased the man in the dark hoodie through the window, down the fire escape, and into the alley. Was it Alex? The man was Alex’s height and weight and too fast to be human. But she couldn’t see his face, and he wasn’t using the amulet.
Meredith sprinted after them, crawling through the window and throwing her legs over the side of the fire escape rather than bothering with the stairs. She landed easily on the balls of her feet and chased Silas and the hooded man around the next corner.
“He went inside ZeroHour,” Silas said, the thumping bass of the nightclub reaching Meredith’s ears.
Damn. Humans. Just what they needed. She pulled her jacket tighter around herself and slipped inside, following Silas. The shoulder-to-shoulder crowd pulsated on the dance floor, the scent of humans burning in her nostrils and the volume of the music rendering her deaf.
A flash of black hoodie in the crowd drew her forward, and she nudged her way into the throng. Meredith swept past Silas, her smaller body weaving between the dancers faster. Among the gyrating bodies, she honed in on her target, her fox senses tracking him to the back of the club.
“Hey!” a girl yelled as Meredith shoved her aside. There was no time to apologize. She chased the hooded man up a set of stairs and into a private room near the back of the club. By the design of this building, there wasn’t a way out aside from the way in—no windows. Which meant either Alex was stupid or this was a trap. And she knew for a fact, Alex wasn’t stupid.
But Meredith forged ahead, suppressing her fears as she ducked inside and drew her weapon. “Hold it right there!” she yelled.
She heard Silas enter the room behind her, saw his weapon in her peripheral vision.
“Finally, someplace we can talk.” The voice wasn’t Alex’s. The lights came on, and the man pushed the hood from his shaved head. A vampire. Without a doubt. His fangs were fully extended, and his eyes were red-rimmed with the need for blood. There was a large tattoo of an ankh symbol on the side of his neck.
“Who are you?” Silas asked.
The man raised his hands, palms out. He was unarmed. Of course, with superhuman speed and razor-sharp teeth, he was absolutely lethal anyway. The bite of a shifted werewolf was deadly to vamps, but the other times of the month, vampires were stronger and faster. Meredith’s finger twitched on the trigger.
“I have a message for you, from Alex,” the vamp said to Silas, ignoring her.
“Where is Alex?” Silas asked.
“Alex warns you to stop looking for him. Laina was only the beginning. If you don’t stop, everyone you love will die a slow and painful death.”
“Where is he? Who’s helping him?” Silas took a step forward, aiming at the vamp’s head.
The vampire shivered violently. “Everyone helps him,” he mumbled. “We have to. All of us.” He took a step back, avoiding one of the cocktail tables. There was nowhere for him to go. No way out but the door he came in through.
“Who, vampires? Why? Why are you helping him?”
“Just stay away from him or Laina dies and Jason is next.” The vamp reached inside the zipper of his hoodie.
“Hands in the air!” Meredith yelled. But the threat went unheeded. The vamp pulled a stake from inside his sweatshirt and thrust it into his heart. Meredith’s gun discharged, although she didn’t consciously pull the trigger. The bullet passed through the vampire’s stake-holding hand, but it was too late. The stake retracted into the chest cavity, the vamp’s body shaking around it, vibrating harder and faster until one arm and then the other dropped and shattered on the floor. The vamp’s legs followed, crumbling to dust and causing the head and torso to collapse. A shower of sparks sprayed forth as the remaining pieces of the vampire decomposed into ash right in front of her.
She stepped forward, her gun still trained on the pile of soot even though not a single bone remained. She kicked the gray dust with the toe of her boot.
“Fucking bastard. Some guys would rather implode than tell the honest truth.”
“We learned what we needed to learn,” Silas said.
“Yeah?”
“We’re getting closer. Alex wouldn’t have bothered with this”—Silas pointed at the mound of dust—“unless he felt threatened.”
Silas could barely keephis eyes open. By the time he’d confirmed, with Meredith’s help, that the small bedroom at Copper Herald’s had been completely cleaned out while they were chasing the vampire, a soul-sapping exhaustion settled over him. Alexhadbeen staying there. The vampire was a decoy. And now both were gone.
The hollow gong of defeat accompanied him through his front door. Even the wag of Maggie’s stubby tail didn’t serve to lighten his mood. He locked up and flopped onto his bed, fully clothed. What if he wasn’t strong enough to catch Alex? Or cunning enough? The pack was counting on their alpha. Laina might pay for his ineptitude with her life.
He closed his eyes and groaned. He could use a drink, but he was old enough to know that this type of self-loathing didn’t mix well with alcohol. He wasn’t above drowning his sorrows, but he understood when he was flirting with dependence. He had no intention of going down that road. Too many people were counting on him. Or maybe he was too tired to lift a bottle even if he had one. He closed his eyes and let himself slip away.
Too soon, bright sunlight filtered through the cracks beneath his lids and warmed his face. Morning already? He rubbed his eyes and opened them slowly. The light was blinding, his view of the room coming together from the edges as his vision adjusted. And then she was there. Soleil, blinking at him from the center of the glow, her hair down in loose waves around her golden shoulders.
“I’m sorry to wake you,” she said softly. “I heard about Laina and needed to see for myself that you were okay.”
He pushed himself up on an elbow, shading his eyes with one cupped hand.
