He bolted.
Someone stood just inside the door of the shop, and Jamie elbowed him out of the way, heard alarmed shouts and a crash of a table. He kept going, didn’t look back.
The exhaust-soaked air of the sidewalk felt fresh by comparison to the shop, but the panic switch had been flipped and he kept going, breaking into a jog and legging it back toward Lanny’s apartment.
Trying to explain that he was live and well would have been difficult. But the impossible thing? The way he’d looked at her, caught her scent, and wanted to press his face into her throat. Wanted to sink his fangs and drink.
More than he’d ever wanted food, or drink, or sleep, or sex, he’d wanted to bite his roommate and draw her blood into his mouth, down his throat. Had imagined its heat and velvet texture.
He couldn’t handle that urge. He couldn’t.
So he ran. Bumping into people, drawing outraged shouts, elbowing and squeezing and cutting across traffic to the blare of horns and squeal of brakes.
He didn’t stop until he reached the lobby of Lanny’s building, and then he collapsed against the mailboxes, breathing raggedly through his mouth.
He still held his coffee, though some of it had slopped out through the drinking hole in the lid and scalded his hand; the skin gleamed pink and angry, though the pain was already receding. He’d crushed the sandwiches in his other fist, the bag crumpled up and starting to tear beneath his fingertips.
He sank down slow, until his butt hit the tile, and sat with his heart racing and his mind struggling to process something that felt like instinct, though it was a completely foreign sensation. Tears blurred his vision, and he pressed his forehead to his knee, blinking furiously.
“I’m not a monster,” he whispered. “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not…”
*
“I have no idea what I’m going to do,” Trina admitted. “I can’t tell my captain what’s really happening, but I have to actually pretend to be following body-snatching leads. Shit.”
Sasha made a sympathetic noise in the passenger seat and took another bite of his hamburger.
“I’m half-tempted to track down Alexei and arrest his ass. He is the culprit, after all.”
“Oh no,” Sasha said, swallowing. “Don’t do that.”
She glanced across the interior of the unmarked car toward him, brows lifted in question as she took a bite of her own burger. They were parked in front of Burger King, partly because they’d both been hungry, but mostly because she was at a big fat dead end in her investigation. She’d never had this problem before: she knew exactly who’d committed the crime, but couldn’t do anything about it.
“The police wouldn’t believe you,” Sasha explained, “and if they did, you couldn’t keep Alexei in a cell anyway. You have to have silver to keep a vampire locked up.”
She slumped down deeper in her seat. “How helpful.”
“And Alexei,” Sasha said, frowning out through the windshield. “Nik is very angry. If Alexei is smart, he’ll be hiding.”
“Yeah, well–”
Sasha sat bolt upright suddenly, burger falling out of his hands and landing on the floorboards.
“What?”
He growled, a low, deep, threatening sound.
“Sasha–” Trina started.
And Alexei Romanov stepped in front of the cruiser and waved at them through the windshield.
*
Lanny detected it the moment they stepped into his building’s lobby: a presence. Not just the hum of awareness that signaled someone standing behind you, not any sort of ambient noise. He could smell someone – pick up his individual scent, know it was a him, one with a faint whiff of blood about his person – and knew that whoever it was had passed through recently and only once; knew that whoever it was was still in the building.
“Did you forget about Jamie?” Nikita asked, and then it all slotted into place.
“Shit, yeah.” Lanny stood in front of the mailboxes, nose full of scent, and matched the name and the face to what he was detecting. Jamie Anderson. Little guy. Artist. Newly a vampire.
“Damn,” he muttered, rubbing at his nose with the back of his hand, trying to block some of the relentless odor of another vampire – a male, a rival his brain said. “This is really fucking weird.”
“Hmm,” Nikita hummed, and led the way up the stairs. Over his shoulder, he said, “Try to control yourself. You’re a lot bigger than he is.”
Lanny refused to make any promises. By the time he fitted his key in the lock, the back of his neck felt tight, his upper lip twitching against his fangs.
But then he got the door open, and there was Jamie curled up on the sofa in a miserable little ball, hugging his knees to his chest, and the fight bled right back out of Lanny. Not a rival at all; just a kid.
Jamie’s head snapped around when they entered, and for one moment he seemed to relax, sagging back into the couch cushions. He opened his mouth to speak – and then froze, eyes widening. He took a deep breath in through his nose, sniffing. Stared at Lanny. “Oh my God, you’re one too, now.” He snapped his mouth shut, gulping audibly. “And I don’t even know how I know that, but I do. I can smell it.” With a groan, he pressed his face into his knees.
“Alright, alright,” Nikita said. He shut the door and went to set the bag of blood on the counter. “Come here both of you. Yes, Lanny is a vampire now,” he said to Jamie. And to Lanny: “Where’s your microwave?”
Five minutes later, Lanny sat beside Jamie on a barstool at his kitchen island drinking a mug of animal blood. And liking it. The Catholic in him wondered how many Hail Marys and Our Fathers he’d have to say to get over this. The vampire in him wished the contents of his cup were a little stronger.
Jamie seemed to be having a similar inner war if his expression was anything to go by.
“Is everybody gonna turn into one?” he asked, licking blood off his upper lip. “Is this like the plague or something? Shit – is this I Am Legend? Fuck, I knew it.”
“No, it isn’t a plague,” Nikita said sternly. He stood on the opposite side of the island, hands braced on the counter, looking like the world’s grumpiest guidance counselor. “This is all because of one vampire.” He looked grim. “We’ve got to put a stop to it. I do. It’s my fault.”
“Pretty sure you weren’t there when he was making out with people’s necks,” Lanny said.
“No, but I had the chance to kill him, and didn’t take it.”
Jamie choked on his next sip.
Lanny said, “Damn. You’re gonna kill him?”
“Do you want him out there loose turning other people?”
“No, but, I mean…didn’t you used to be the president of his dad’s fan club or something?”
Nikita snorted. “Or something.”
*
Sasha kept up a steady, rolling growl, words full of gravel. “Lock your door. Stay in the car.” He popped his own door and slid out of the cruiser with the graceful, threatening movements of a predator. She’d seen it last night and marveled at it still: the way he went from looking like a slender nineteen-year-old to something poised and dangerous. Even without shifting, Sasha turned into the sort of thing you didn’t want to run into in an alley.
He approached Alexei with his head down – shielding his throat – lips skinned back off his teeth, snarling now. The sound sent a shiver down Trina’s spine.
Alexei held up both hands, palms out; his expression remained mild. “I didn’t come to fight, Sasha. I wanted to check on Lanny.”
Sasha’s head dropped even lower, shoulders bunching up. He looked ready to spring. “How do you think he is after you turned him? Why would you do that? You know better!”
In her mirror, Trina spotted a handful of customers that had come to a standstill in the parking lot, watching what looked like a major beatdown about to unfold. And Sasha was growling. Shit.
She opened her door, climbed out, and said, “Boys, let’s not make a big scene in broad daylight, okay?”
They both turned to her.