Metal glinted in her palm as she reached through the busted window, blade aimed at my throat and the seat belt cutting into my neck. Light exploded in a blinding flash from the frame as the wards ignited, and the vampire howled in agony then fell on her butt in the gravel.
I shouldn’t have laughed, goddess knows I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did. I kept going until I hurt all over, but I couldn’t stop. The manic relief bubbling up my throat kept spilling over until both vampires took wary steps away from me.
“She’s unhinged,” the sister lamented. “Do you think she was like this before?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” the brother countered. “Come on, Ernestine.” Shuffling ensued, but all I could see were two pairs of black-clad legs tussling. “The wraith is like a beacon. The potentate will come for her.”
“We’ll never get another chance as good as this one,” she argued.
“You’ll never get another chance period,” a new voice, dripping with ice, assured them.
The night came alive around us, shadows roiling, darkness rippling. A bone-deep cold pervaded the car until my teeth chattered from the sudden temperature drop. The hem of a wraithlike cloak swept into view, black tendrils whipping out, striking at the fractured light from the streetlamps overhead.
“We meant no harm, Potentate.” The brother was quick to drop to his knees. “Have mercy.”
There was no hesitation, no deliberation. “No.”
Moonlight glinted off a wide blade as it completed its arc, and the man’s head rolled to a stop against the car door. His disintegration was a slow, pathetic thing. He was new. Still juicy. Only the cast-iron stomach that came standard on necromancers kept me from spewing my hot chocolate.
“Frederick,” Ernestine wailed. “You killed him.”
“You almost killed one of mine,” Linus snapped. “You would have returned her to her cage.”
“The Master wouldn’t have harmed her.” She protested the second charge, knowing there was no wiggling out of the first. “She is his. We were doing as we were told.”
“Grier belongs to no one.”
Metal sang, and a second head joined the first. This one crumbled until the vampire was dust.
A distant part of my brain noted I had been wrong about them being siblings. Their deaths proved that much. Whatever game they had played with each other had been set into motion centuries apart, and it was done.
A familiar apparition peeled from the hem of the roiling cloak, and Cletus drifted over to me, running his skeletal knuckles across the wound on my cheek. Linus trailed him, the blanket of night sky unraveling as he approached, and knelt at my window, ducking until his forearms mashed into gravel, and we made eye contact.
“Thank Hecate,” he breathed. “I got here as fast as I could, but I thought for certain I would be too late.”
“Linus,” I murmured, giving my eyes permission to close. “What are you?”
All the blood had rushed to my head, drumming in my ears. That’s the only reason why I thought he replied yours.
Eleven
Suffocating pressure on my chest forced my eyes open, and I woke gasping for breath. “Meiko?” The hand I swatted the cat with weighed five hundred pounds. “Get off me. I can’t breathe.”
A heartbeat later, a nude woman stretched out beside me, her cheek propped on her fist. “My bad.”
“Why are you always naked?” I sucked down gulps of sweet oxygen. “Don’t you own any clothes?”
“I am how you imagine me to be.” She walked her fingers up my arm, and I noticed I had been stripped down to my underwear. “At least give me lingerie. Something pink and lacy.” She popped my bra strap. “I can Google it on your phone if you’ve never seen sexy underwear. Clearly, you’ve never worn any.”
The snap radiated pain throughout my tender shoulder. For a second, I wondered why it hurt, but then I recalled the seat belt clenching taut. Quick as a blink, the wreck exploded with crystalline clarity in my mind.
“Neely.” I shoved upright, wincing. “Where’s Neely?”
“Relax.” She pushed me back down then slapped me in the face with Boaz’s oversized T-shirt. “And put this on.”
“Where is my friend?” I shouted at her smug face. “I have to see him.”
“He’s at the human hospital where humans belong.” Her rounded ears twitched like they wanted to flatten but couldn’t in this form. None too gently, she yanked the shirt over my head. “He’s got a broken nose, a fractured rib, and bruising, but that’s it.” She bared her teeth. “What does it matter if he dies today or in, what, five years? Humans are short-lived and—”
Body screaming from the strain, I fisted a clump of her hair and flung her off the bed. The expected thump of impact took longer than I anticipated, and that’s when I grasped the situation.
This was Linus’s bed, up in the loft, and I had tossed her down into the living room.
“Meiko?” I eased onto the floor then crawled to the edge and peered over. “Are you okay?”
A cat stood where the woman must have hit, fur standing upright over every inch of her, but she had landed on her feet. Ears pinned back, she slinked off, tails whipping through the air.
A wash of tingles over my skin had me eyeballing the door before it opened, and Linus entered with a stout vampire beside him. She wore scrubs a size too small, and a crossbody bag bumped against her hip when she walked. Her nostrils flared, scenting blood, and her gaze swung up to meet mine.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Linus strode forward, hand outstretched as if I were in danger of falling and he planned on catching me. “Are you hurt?”
“I, uh—” I raked my frizzy hair from my eyes, “—accidentally tossed your cat out of the loft.”
Meiko chose that moment to yowl piteously, and he glanced between us. “I see.”
“Hello, Grier.” The doctor approached the stairs. “I’m Dr. Daria Schmidt. I practice out of Gershwin Memorial Hospital, but Scion Lawson convinced me to make a house call.”
“Oh good.” I sat upright, folding my legs in lotus position until the room stopped wobbling. “I need to check the status on my friend. He was driving when the accident occurred.”
“I just left Mr. Torres.” Her smile was warm, her lips held tight to hide her fangs. “He’s stable. His nose has been reset, his ribs wrapped, and his boo-boos kissed by a handsome lawyer.”
“You were his doctor?” Shock made me borderline rude, but vampire doctors didn’t waste time on human patients. “I apologize for my surprise.”
After winking, she cut her eyes to Linus. “Mr. Lawson was very persuasive.”
“I bet.” His checkbook could persuade most anyone of anything. “How many zeroes did it take to convince you to treat a human patient?”
Linus stared me down. Up. Whatever. “Grier.”
Schmidt guffawed, her feelings clearly not bruised. “Enough I almost ran out of fingers before I ran out of zeroes.”
“Send me the bill,” I demanded. “Whatever it cost, I’ll pay it.”
Linus developed a sudden case of selective hearing that tempted me to ask Schmidt to examine him.
“I’ll come up to you,” she said. “Could you get back in bed, please?”
“Sure thing.” I grunted as I unfolded my limbs. “Just a sec.”
Schmidt climbed into the loft while I rallied my battered legs into cooperating with me.
After setting down her supplies, she opened her arms, preparing to scoop me up and carry me. Her blue scrubs were a long way from pink satin and lace, but a vampire coming at me with arms extended kicked my hindbrain into high gear. I started backing away, not stopping even when my palms hit the edge.
“Step away from her,” Linus commanded an instant before an icy hand clamped down on my wrist. He balanced with half his body on the stairs, half in the loft, and my back pressed flush to his chest. “Grier, I need you to calm down.” He traded his initial grip for pinning an arm around my waist. “Daria isn’t going to hurt you. She won’t touch you if you don’t want her to.” His cool breath tickled my ear. “I can find someone else.”
“I’m the best doctor in the city,” she said defensively.