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I fumble along my side for my holster, but he doesn’t give me a chance to finish the move. He doesn’t feint the next pounce. He snags my wrist and tugs me forward, propelling me through the room like it’s nothing. Like I weigh nothing. My shoulder feels like it’s being ripped apart, and I cry out in pain as I fight against gravity and vertigo, stumbling along on weak knees and burning thigh muscles. Seems like some of my senses are slowly coming back. Too bad it’s the pain receptors. He flinches again at my sound of pain, but his hesitation only lasts a moment. Then he’s on me with two wide steps, hooking his foot behind my heel. A hard shove against my sternum topples me back, and I fall, grabbing for him on instinct. My fingers slide along his blood-slick arm, nails scratching over his skin, but he shakes me off with a snarl and I hit the floor hard. My head bounces off the dirty wood with less force than I expected, but the impact still rings my bell with a burst of white spots.

Fuck, it hurts. And it’s the third time I hit my head. If I don’t get away from this with a major concussion, I’ll eat my shoe. I attempt to writhe away, but a weight settles on my hips and pins me down. Cor stares down at me with half bared teeth, less angry than I expected, but unhappy enough to give me pause. I move to sit up, but he grabs my throat and pushes me back down, growling a warning. Okay, then, lying down it is.

His face twists slightly and a small frown line appears on his forehead. Cor licks his lip, opens his mouth, then closes it again and gnashes his teeth in concentration. If I didn’t know better—if I wasn’t so sure I have a concussion and am most likely imagining things by this point—, I would say he is fumbling for words. Whatever is going through his mind right now, though, whatever reason he has to play with me like this, it must be important.

The frown lines disappear. Cor leans forward, puts a little more weight on my throat, and growls. A single word tumbles out of his lips, bursting from his throat like the first rumble of an earthquake. “Behave.”

My face goes numb as all blood leaves for greener pastures. Behave? How am I supposed to behave in a fight for life and death? Unless this isn’t a fight for life and death. I blink up at him, at his unhappy face, the harsh tug around his lips, the tension in his wide shoulders, the crease between his brows, and realize: This is him playing nice.

It shouldn’t startle me. I have seen what he can do, how strong he is, how fast, and how I compare to him. Which is, not at all. The crestfallen expression, the flinches, come back to me and I groan out a curse. No. He isn’t just trying to play nice; he’s trying to not hurt me at all, and I still come out as one massive bruise on the other side. My spine screams with the need to writhe, but I force myself to lie still. To be calm.

His eyes flit over my face. Whatever he sees seems to satisfy him, and he relaxes his grip on my throat minutely as he straightens. Again that pondering expression appears on his face. He cocks his head, licks his lips, and growls another word. “Mine.”

When he’s done with his Herculean feat, he bares his teeth in a creepy grin, proud like a peacock. Like he has explained everything that has been happening to the furthest extent possible, and there can’t possibly be any more questions I could ask.

My chest tightens in a burst of adrenaline. He thinks I understand, but I don’t. I so don’t. What is that supposed to mean? Me, his? What the hell is he thinking? I’m a Hunter, not a second-rate romance novel protagonist who falls head over heels at first sight for the bad boy vampire. I have a faint notion of what he means when he proclaims ownership of me, but the concept is simply too ludicrous to entertain. I can’t even imagine how the idea of me becoming a thrall, having a vampire lay claim to me, would go over with my clan. Because it wouldn’t. They would shoot him on the spot and give me the whipping of my life. Or simply kill me too, because I’ve been compromised.

Holy shit, I can’t ever let them know I’ve been compromised!

Panic claws at me, scratching its way up and up until I feel like I will either vomit or faint. The genuine threat sitting on me is forgotten, and I buck against Cor’s weight, screaming as I shove at his chest and try to crocodile-roll him off me. I can’t get enough air into my lungs, but I need to get out, now!

Cor pays my minor panic attack no attention, though. He even slides off my hips as he turns his head toward the window and tenses, crouching, focused on something I can neither hear nor see. A low growl vibrates through him. His nostrils flare as he sucks in air, ready to pounce. At what, I have no idea. I just know that I seem to have suddenly been forgotten. I’ve been handed one last chance to make my move and get myself out of this catastrophe.

I crab-walk backwards until my back hits the wall, using his distraction to get some distance between us. My head swims, vision tilting. Damn it, I should have listened to Stanley. Cor can’t call me his in front of anyone, not even me. Not even inside the privacy of his own mind. It’s a death sentence. I’m not ready to die. I have to kill him, maybe then I can breathe again, maybe then my heart will calm down and stop trying to burst out of my chest.

The leather holster slips my grasp again and again, until I finally feel the butt of my Glock in my hand, cursing the sweet Mary as I pull the weapon and aim—

At nothing. The vampire—Cor—isn’t there anymore.

The empty space makes my heart race. I swerve the gun like a floret at an empty flat, my brain insisting he will jump me when I least expect it. Dust floats through the stuffy, moist air and scratches in my throat as I heave to keep up with my racing heart, but there’s nobody here but me. Me and a half-open window, squeaking tiredly as it moves in the wind and rain. Guess he does have no issue with simply hopping out a window.

The floor conspires against me, moving up and down and side to side as I stumble to the window to look outside, even though I don’t know what I’m supposed to look for. The nightly yard below swims and tilts like a ship’s deck at high seas, blurring the moving shapes down on the concrete. I blink and shake my head, but my sight clears only marginally. Still, what were mere shapes now turn into people.

Five strangers prowl the yard, dressed in shimmering, black, well-worn leather. Their movements are nothing but groups of white dots, a face and two pale hands per person, dancing through the darkness as they enter the courtyard. They stop at the bodies of the vampires I shot, gesturing and hissing to each other, their faces darting back and forth as they scan the surroundings for threats.

I grab the windowsill to keep myself still, but my weight dislodges a tiny clump of brick and sends it down onto the concrete. All five of them snap their heads around at the tiny plink, inevitably looking up to follow the trail of pebbles to its source. Me.

Shit.

COLD, WET WIND greets me when I step out of the abandoned apartment block and into the unsteady night. The rain has ceased for a moment, like the sky is taking a breath before the next downpour. I take a sneaky glance around, hoping against hope that Cor is still around and ready to jump in and explain everything, but he isn’t. And even if he were, he wouldn’t talk. He’d simply try to eat them, from what Stanley told me. And I’m starting to believe him; I’ve seen Cor’s reaction to vampires. He despises his own kind to a point where his first reaction is to attack on sight, and there are already enough bodies lying around. I’m sick and tired of death, and it’s only my first day of active duty.

The twisted remains of the amulet feel weird in my pocket, as if I am committing a crime by keeping them. My clothes are both bloody and rain drenched, my neck is not only scratched to all hell but also home to another vampire bite, and I’m fucking out of ammo except for one lonely bullet still waiting in the magazine. Being in a veil as a hunter is bad enough. Being an unarmed hunter in a veil, —well, you get the picture. And now I’m surrounded by even more vampires, which doesn’t look good compared to my track record so far. If those newcomers are friends of the dead vampires on the ground, I’m in big trouble. And since they all share a fashion theme…

I raise my hands as I step out of the building, both to make my holstered gun visible and to make sure they know I want to talk. Not that it changes anything; we’re way outside my jurisdiction. They could kill me right here, right now, and nobody would come after them. Hell, for all I know there could be other critters lurking in the darkness, just waiting to be tagged in and have a go at me.

A vampire jerks to a halt mid-step before me, staring at me with a mixture of surprise and angry confusion. He takes in my raised hands, my gun, my scent, and bares his blunt teeth into a sharp grin. No fangs yet, thankfully. He’s a big fella, though. I can’t even look over his shoulder, not to mention around him, because he’s built like a brick wall. He could be the main act in a Conan the Barbarian reenactment show, all muscly and long-haired and weathered.

“You! What are you doing here? This is private property,” barks the vampire. His eyes twitch left and right, on the lookout for attackers as he puffs up. There’s a lot to puff up, too. I’m almost affronted by the implication that I couldn’t have killed those vampires all on my little lonesome, but in this case, I wisely shut up.

“It’s not your property, that’s for sure,” I reply and daintily step over some bricks and closer to the would-be security guard. “And I appreciate your kiss trying to clean up its own messes, but if Loreley thinks for a second, I’d let her add any other favors to her fine, she’s got another thing coming.”

Confusion dances over his forbidding face. “Loreley? Wha—” He stops himself and shakes his head, lips curved into a grimace of vague disgust. “We’re taking a walk, you and I. Move.”

The four other vampires await us with expressionless faces. My keeper herds me towards them with a single, pointed push against my back that almost sends me to the ground. I throw him a dirty look over my shoulder, but keep walking until I’m surrounded. Not my favorite position. Makes my back prickle, having to let it happen.

All five of them are giants, all male, all dark-haired. They look like second cousins from parents who were too closely related to be having fun with each other, and I don’t like the way they stare at me. It’s not hunger, not even hate or interest. Their eyes focus on me like a cat would watch a mouse strolling by. Dispassionate, but very, very attentive.

Now that they have me surrounded, they relax slightly. The one to my left, as indistinguishable from each other as the rest of them, looks me up and down and clicks his tongue. “You one of the Hunters?” he asks, his accent a heavy, hoarse melody that doesn’t match his effortless English. He sounds like a well-coached movie villain.