“Get up!” The barked command was low, but reached Asher’s ears like a gunshot.
Another voice answered, this one pitched several octaves higher and talking fast, the words indiscernible even to his heightened hearing. But he didn’t need to hear what was being said. The anxiety pulsing in the night air was unmistakable. As was the menace of the three men who had no idea they weren’t the only killers in the immediate area.
“You heard him. Get the fuck on your feet and keep moving,” ordered the second man, his garlic breath wafting on the light breeze along with his sadistic chuckle. “Unless you want us to plant your skinny ass right here. The boss don’t care how this goes down, only that you never come back.”
The soft cry came again, followed by a thready plea for mercy that made Asher’s jaw clench.
Fuck.
Old memories roared up on him like a black wave, too swift and powerful for him to hold at bay. A chorus of similar begging cries filled his ears, his senses overwhelmed by the vivid, merciless battering of all the sins he’d witnessed in his past.
And those he had perpetrated.
Unwanted reminders of what he once was were bad enough, but teamed with his unique Breed ability to experience anyone else’s painful memories in full sensory detail and total recall with the briefest touch made Asher’s preference for solitude a necessity as much as it was a way of life.
What he damned well didn’t need was to get involved with whatever was going on between Garlic Breath and his heavily perfumed partners and the scrawny teen who’d evidently irritated someone enough to order these men to drag the kid out here to certain death.
But that didn’t keep Asher’s feet from moving beneath him, stalking straight toward the trouble.
“Problem, gentlemen?”
“What the fuck!” One of the Cheap Cologne brothers swiveled around on his polished shoes, his dark suit jacket flapping open to reveal the empty holster strapped across his chest. The gun he was holding had bright red blood on it from when he’d evidently pistol-whipped the dark-haired kid in the oversized hoodie and loose jeans. Now the thug didn’t seem so tough. His weapon wobbled in his hand as his gaze lifted, then lifted some more, to meet Asher’s narrowed glare. “Where the hell did you come fr—”
The blurt died in the back of his gaping mouth when he looked at Asher—really looked at him—taking note of the unearthly glow of his irises and the sharp points of his fangs, which had erupted from his gums in response to the fury now streaking through his veins.
“Oh, shit.” The goon staggered back on his heels, dropping his weapon on a choked scream. He took off at a dead run, scrambling blindly into the desert while his patchouli-drenched comrade made a fast break for the vehicle. Asher barely glanced up to follow either human’s retreating form. The vapor trail they left in their wake was like an unseen tether that would lead him to both of the men no matter how fast or far they tried to run.
Garlic Breath wasn’t as smart as his companions. “Fucking bloodsucker,” he snarled.
He had one hand on the kid’s small shoulder, possibly the only thing keeping the limp and beaten youth upright. The kid’s head drooped low, a face with delicate Asian features all but concealed by longish, blood-matted hair.
Garlic Breath shoved his silent captive to the ground with one hand, his attention—and his weapon—fixed on Asher now. The semiautomatic pistol clutched in his ham-sized fist didn’t shake at all. “Eat lead, you Breed asshole!”
On a roar, he pulled the trigger in rapid fire, three close-range shots aimed at Asher’s chest. All but the first one missed. And while that single round to the right of Asher’s sternum wouldn’t slow him down, much less kill him, it did piss him off.
Before Garlic Breath could squeeze off the rest of his magazine, Asher reached out and crushed the barrel of the gun as if it were made of foil.
“You were saying?”
Shocked eyes went wide, staring up into Asher’s bleak face. The goon couldn’t answer even if he tried. Asher had the man’s throat in his fist. He crushed the fragile windpipe with one idle flex of his fingers. On a garlic-soaked gurgle, the human exhaled for the last time before his limp body fell to the desert floor like the rubbish it was.
Asher turned an assessing eye on the youth who lay prone and eerily still in the nearby bramble. He resisted the impulse to reach out and feel for a heartbeat, instead listening to the quiet, shallow breaths and watching as the slender spine and rib cage moved nearly imperceptibly beneath the baggy sweatshirt.
The kid was alive. At least that counted for something.
Meanwhile, he had two other problems to contend with.
Calmly, without a speck of feeling, he retrieved the bloodied pistol from the sand where Cheap Cologne Number One had dropped it and fired a single shot into the darkened desert. The gunfire echoed, then the fleeing coward hit the ground several yards away, dead on his feet.
Asher turned to find the last of the three men at the shoulder of the road, scrambling to get inside the black sedan. Another bullet could have easily stopped him, too, but Asher’s former line of work balked at such crude methods.
He told himself it was that cold part of him that propelled him into motion, and not the gut-kick he’d felt when he heard the battered, defenseless kid pleading for mercy that was never going to come.
“Where you think you’re going?”
Asher’s deep, unfazed voice made the last of the cowards jump so hard it might have been mistaken for an epileptic convulsion. Trapped between the opened driver’s side door and Asher’s massive presence now, Cheap Cologne Number Two pivoted clumsily, hands held up in front of him.
“Oh, God! Wait a second, all right? Wait!” The man spoke in a rush, eyes darting as he edged further into the car, as if some instinctive part of him that couldn’t accept his imminent demise held out hopes of making it behind the wheel before Asher ended him.
