I threw my weight against the door when it buckled again. I wasn’t a small guy, but I wasn’t exactly at peak strength either. Someone shouldered the door, and I heard wood crack. It wouldn’t hold for long. I winced as the second thud caused the wood to splinter.
My head was pounding. With every crash of the body against the door I was met with an equal thump in my head. My back to the door, I pressed the heels of my hands into my temples, desperate for the pain to stop. Both of them were shouting on the other side, but I couldn’t make out the words.
The ache in my head grew so intense that my vision blurred. I swayed on my feet, which gave them the leverage they needed to burst through. I was thrown forward, too fast to catch myself. Searing pain shot through my head as it connected with the metal edge of a shelf, and the room went dark again.
“I can’t believeyou didn’t restrain him!”
“I can’t believe you slept with him!”
“Shut up! Christ, you two are worse than children.”
Silence fell over the room. I forced my eyes open. Dani and Luke were standing there, watching me with thunderstruck expressions. Oh.I’djust told them to shut up.
I hadn’t thought the pain in my head could get any worse. Turns out I’d been very, very wrong. Only this time it was accompanied by the feeling of something stuck to my forehead. Nausea bubbled up, and I did my best to swallow it down. I tried to cover my mouth with my hand, only to find that they’d been bound behind my back. I wriggled, feeling anotherrestraint digging into my stomach and two more encircling my ankles.
“You’ve proven more trouble than I expected,” I heard Dani say. I blinked and the room came into focus. We were in the main bar area, and Dani—who sported a swollen, reddened nose, probably from smashing face first into the door earlier—was reaching over to a table, where a silver dagger gleamed. I squeezed my eyes shut again, as if that would stop what was coming. I felt more than heard her stand behind me. She grabbed a fistful of my hair and wrenched my head back, making me cry out.
“Dani, stop!”
With the cold metal of the dagger against my throat, I risked opening my eyes. Luke stood in front of me, arms folded over his chest. “Remember, you said we need him alive to lure James here.”
“I also said not to mention that fact in front of him,” she growled. A moment later, she sighed. “I was just making sure he’d cooperate with us. He’s notoriously stubborn.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as the dagger clattered to the floor next to my feet. Dani began pacing in front of me. She held something in her hand, but I couldn’t see what it was. “Where is he, anyway? I hoped he’d be here by now.”
That makes two of us.
“Dani?” God, my throat felt like gravel. Her steps halted. For a second, something flashed in her eyes. Something like pity or regret. It lasted only a quick second, then she masked it. “What did you mean before?”
“When?”
I swallowed. Well, I tried to. “You said you almost had James.”
Dani scoffed, and for a second I thought she’d brush me off and return to her pacing, but instead she grabbed a chair anddragged it across the room. The object in her hand finally came into view as she sat facing me: a silver crucifix. It was at least eight inches long and it looked heavy. Even more worrisome, its bottom edge had been sharpened into a point that reminded me eerily of a stake…
She began to speak, pulling my eyes back to her face. “The only reason I started working at this bar was because of him. I’ve been hunting him for the last decade. Five years ago, I lost track of him on the West Coast. I’ve never been a huge fan of the whole ‘keep your friends close’ motif, but in this case it worked. Shift by shift we grew closer, and one night he confided in me. Granted, he thought I was too drunk to remember, but he didn’t deny it when I approached him about it the next day. The arrangement was his idea. I caught a nasty stomach flu, and he offered to heal me. I didn’t have anything to lose: I’d finally start getting my hands on the concrete proof our boss needed, and I wouldn’t feel like I was dying anymore.
“You showed up right around the time it was supposed to end. Then he—” she glared at Luke, “—got sloppy and showed his brother all of our evidence.”
“I didn’t show him the evidence!” Luke snapped. Then he wilted. “He found it,” he said in a small voice.
Dani clicked her tongue. “Either way, we had to reevaluate. If James wound up murdered, Kian might tip someone off. We needed it to look like an accident, and while we planned, you two started a relationship.”
“So I became your target?”
“We hunt monsters, Ryder, we aren’t monsters ourselves. We’re meant to protect people—even sympathizers like you. You weren’t supposed to be there when we struck. We tried to ensure you were distracted, but again, someone’s sloppy.” She threw a disgusted look at Luke.
I connected the dots. “That’s why you had Hannah followed.”
Luke huffed. “I was afraid she’d recognize me. Besides, I’m not the one who tripped the alarm.”
“He’d never set the damn thing before. Unlike the fire door.” At her pointed look, Luke flushed. Dani picked up the artifact in her lap, turning it over in her fingers. “All I had to do was start a fire. All of his vampire speed would amount to nothing in the face of flames.”
I wanted more information, but my throat had reached its limit. Dani picked up her weapon and started pacing again. Just then, I thought I heard a shuffling sound from one of the back rooms. I glanced at Dani, then side-eyed Luke. Neither of them seemed to have noticed.
My eyelids grew heavy again. I fought to keep them open, to hold my head up. I didn’t want to lose sight of my captors. I noticed Luke was fidgety, even more so than Dani. His eyes flicked back and forth, and he looked on the verge of bolting at any second. That gave me a little bit of hope. If he fled, I was sure I could take Dani on myself.
But first I had to remove the restraints.
