A summoning spell? Now she was talking spooky shit. You had to be damn careful when you used dark magic. You never knew what in the hell would hitch a ride on that darkness and come traveling straight to you.
As he watched her, thinking about his own darkness, a shiver worked over Dee’s body. “Uh, Dee? You okay?”
“Fine. Just cold. Can we turn the heater up?”
Because summers in Baton Rouge were cold. Right. But he still flicked on the heater. Didn’t matter to him. “Maybe we should wait.” He sure wasn’t feeling up to kicking major vampire ass right then. Perhaps after a meal or two.
“No time.” She criss-crossed her arms and rubbed her flesh. She had on a light blouse, one of her shirts she’d found at the cabin. One that gave him a nice glimpse of her br**sts. “We’ve already lost a few hours. We hunt, now and—there.”
He followed her suddenly sharp gaze. A man had stepped out of the shadows. The faint red glow of his cigarette lit the night. “Who the hell is that?”
“An informer.” She tilted her head and his stare snapped back to her and to that beautiful bared throat.
Focus.
But the drumming was back in his temples. Harder, more painful than before.
“Ian knows this city. He’ll be able to tell me the latest whispers on the vamps.”
Control. Simon sucked in a deep breath.
“I knew he’d be here.” She unhooked her belt.
“And how’d you know that?” He gritted, turning off the engine.
Dee pointed toward the hollowed-out husk of a building on the left. “Because his brother died in that fire a year ago. He comes here every Friday. He comes to remember.”
Simon narrowed his eyes and looked once more at that glowing cigarette. “Uh, yeah, how’d that fire start?”
“You don’t want to know.” She pushed open the door, then hesitated. “Ian doesn’t take too well to others. Just stay here, okay? I’ll only be a few minutes.”
Staying in the f**king car. Was that what he’d been reduced to?
But the woman was gone. Running across the street. Disappearing in and out of the shadows.
Staying in the f**king car. No. Not his style.
He was there to watch her back. Not to be left behind.
He opened his door soundlessly, then, moving slower than her, but keeping to the same shadows, he began to follow her.
The smoke from the cigarette drifted to her nostrils. Dee stepped into the faint streetlight, deliberately placing herself in Ian’s path. With Ian, you had to identify yourself fast—or he’d attack.
And sometimes, he attacked no matter what.
“Ian.” She made her voice quiet but calm. “Ian, I need your help.”
He was half-hidden by the darkness. The cigarette dangled from his fingertips. He wasn’t smoking. Hadn’t smoked in a year.
“Dee?” The tip of the cigarette bobbed and ash drifted into the night. “That you?”
Okay, he wasn’t coming at her with fists yet. A good sign. She’d told Simon to stay back because one look at him, and she knew Ian would have broken.
The guy just hadn’t been the same since the fire. Not that she blamed him. No, not at all. “Yeah, Ian, it’s me.”
He shifted his stance a bit, bringing the right side of his face more into the light. A strong, hard face. “Heard you killed a human, Dee.” He shook his head. “Bad move that.”
“I didn’t do it, Ian.”
“Humans are supposed to stick together. All those paranormal ass**les out there want us gone. We have to fight ’em.”
More ash drifted away.
“I want to fight them tonight, Ian.” She had to keep Ian focused. So hard. The man already had one foot in the grave. Maybe that was how he did it because she sure as hell wasn’t sure how he found out all his information about the Other.
Ian was psychic. She’d always known that. But since the fire, it was like he was some kind of open channel to the darkness in the city.
He took a step forward, and the light drifted across him, across the ruined, twisted, and reddened flesh on the left side of his face.
Dee kept her eyes on his. “Help me, Ian.”
“The vampires are coming for you, Sandra Dee.” His voice had hollowed and taken on that empty tone that came with his visions. “Inching ever closer. Closer than you know…”
Simon caught the scent in the air. Blood. Fresh blood. He jerked to a halt, his nostrils flaring. Dee stood about ten feet away from him, whispering to the bastard in the shadows.
But the blood scent was coming from the left. Drifting from the mouth of that alley. Garbage and decay—and sweet human blood.
He hesitated, his gaze on that yawning opening.
“Help…” The faintest of whispers.
Simon closed his eyes. An attack. Right there, so close.
Close enough for the blood to tempt him.
Dee had been right. This was the perfect place to hunt. But not for them.
These hunting grounds belonged to the vampires.
“Help…m—” A choked gurgle. A death cry.
Shit.
Simon ran for the alley’s entrance.
Dee’s head snapped up at the thunder of footsteps. Simon. She spun around and saw him run into an alley. Where the hell was he going?
Ian grabbed her hand, the hard flesh of his burnt fingers and palm scraping against her. “Coming from the inside, Sandra Dee. The thing you fear will take you tonight.”
And just like that, the odd chill she’d felt in the car was back. “You telling me I’m going to die, Ian?”
His muddy gaze drifted back to the burnt house. “Saw the fire, you know. Dreamed it.”
Ian always had his dreams. Dreams that had sent him to the edge of sanity and beyond. “I know about your dreams.” Everyone knew, human and supernatural.
“Told Brian it wasn’t safe. Told him to leave.”
Brian. Ian’s twin. Addicted to crack and eaten away by cancer.
“But then I felt the fire start, and I had to go to him. I knew—I knew he hadn’t left.”
He’d walked into the flames for his brother. Faced death.
And still Brian had been taken by the flames.
But Ian hadn’t died. Not fully.
“I saw Death that night.” He turned away, so that only the perfect side of his face remained. “I see him now. He’s with you. Standing so close.”
This wasn’t the tip she’d wanted.
His lips rose in a humorless curl. “Don’t worry, Sandra Dee. You won’t be alone. I’ll be right there with you. Every minute.”