Sex. I can smell the sex she wants so badly right on her skin. How will it taste?
Someone’s belly went tight, body tensing with the yearning to join with a counterpart.
Lee.
Someone craved to become him, to fuse with him again in this substitute act of connecting. An act of beautiful violence. An act of hating and worshipping a fallen hero.
Unaware of what was in the closet, the victim sauntered to the bathroom, slipping the tiny straps of her dress down her shoulders on the way.
The bathroom light swicked on, slicing over the floor.
It’s time. It’s my turn to shine now.
Carefully, Someone grabbed the knife, then opened the closet door and crept to the bathroom, fangs gleaming in the mirror during the impulsive emergence of a smile.
And when Jessica Reese looked in that mirror to see Someone behind her, it was already too late for her to scream.
THE PLAYERS
E VEN with her eyes closed, Dawn Madison was aware of a vague, lurking danger.
Dressed in basic street wear—a sleeveless white T, black jeans, leather bracelets—she crouched, waiting for the next attack, senses alive. She caught the scent of old wood, paint, and must that lingered in the corners of the room. She heard a reporter’s voice barking from the TV speakers her opponents had turned on in order to mask their movements. Her skin prickled as an air-conditioned breeze hushed over her.
But there was something else out there…stalking….
A pop from her right split the air, and a projectile whizzed toward her. With the well-trained moves of an athlete, she banked to the left, using her shoulder to cushion herself while rolling to her knees. Another object came at her from the opposite direction. She dropped backward, grunting, her spine hitting the floor, her bent legs splaying to give her leeway. Immediately rolling to her stomach, then pushing up to her feet, she landed in another crouch, her hands at the ready.
“Not bad for the dead of night,” yelled a tinny male voice that echoed off the windowless walls.
Heart pattering, Dawn exhaled, regulating her stress while keeping her eyes shut. She maintained her position, ready to withstand anything. “You guys take forever to reload. Can’t you go any faster?”
She heard Kiko Daniels make an okay-you-asked-for-it sound as he inserted another beanbag into his gun.
Dawn tuned her ears in to what was happening with her second opponent. Breisi Montoya. Kiko wasn’t very mobile with the back brace he was wearing, but his team member had been all over the room trying to whoop Dawn’s ass during this agility session. The other woman’s bare feet cushioned her stealthy attacks, aiding her in smacking Dawn with three damned bruises already.
The drone of the TV battled Dawn’s concentration as she tried to detect Breisi’s whereabouts. To the right? Left?
Temples throbbing, she stayed cool. She’d have no other choice if this simulation were real; although the three of them hadn’t faced any vampires for over a month, the monsters were still out there. In fact, The Voice kept telling them it was just a matter of time before the vamps reemerged from their “Underground”—or whatever it was the team had gotten wind of.
Dawn blew out a breath, picturing herself outside at night, the moon shrouded behind the tips of pine trees. This training session was supposed to simulate the threat of one vamp variety they’d uncovered. The subspecies was bald, pale, clawed, with iron fangs and attacks that came as fast as those beanbags, especially when they used whip-quick tails with bladed ends.
Red-eyes, the team had called them.
But, Underground, she knew the group was named something else. Guards. Robby Pennybaker had revealed this and more before he’d turned into yet another form of vamp, a creature way more powerful than a Guard or one of the basic silver-eyed Goths the team had also encountered. Terrible to look upon and deadly to fight, Robby had thrown diminutive Kiko across a room and into a wall, breaking his back. The creature had also mentally violated Dawn’s mind until she thought she would break, too.
And that’s just one of the reasons Dawn had killed him.
Now, she was preparing to function without ever having to look any of those creatures in the eye—she’d never get mind screwed by a vamp again. Wouldn’t ever allow them inside so they could see her weaknesses, especially her desperation to find her dad, who’d gone missing over a month ago….
She heard a pop from across the room, straight ahead. Responding by pure instinct, she launched herself sideways, forcing her mind to act as a weapon.
Push…out!
But the trick didn’t work this time, not like it had when she’d fought Robby. She’d accidentally belted the vampire with some kind of mental shove, and she didn’t know how to re-create it, even if she’d surprised herself by doing it a couple of times during this last month of training.
That made it an undependable tactical option.