“I think so.” She sure seemed to know me. “Can you give us a minute?”
“Sure.” Joy glanced at her plastic cup. “I’m empty anyway,” she said, and headed off.
The girl from the patio came right up and stopped in front of me. She obviously had an agenda. It seemed like the right call to let her make the first move, so I stood there, trying to look relaxed.
She was prettier up close—streaky blond hair that fell over one shoulder and tan skin. Not a lot of makeup. Maybe none. She wore a weathered black jacket, tight jeans, and scuffed boots. A backpack was slung over her right shoulder. She wasn’t a college student, though. She just didn’t look it. This girl had switchblades in her eyes and don’t mess with me in her posture. She looked like she could handle herself. Super confident.
Her gaze flicked down to my left wrist. I immediately regretted not wearing a sweatshirt to cover up the cuff. When her eyes lifted again, the look in them was such an insane mixture of curiosity, relief, and fear that for a second, I wondered if I’d met her at some point in the past, offended her, then forgotten all about her.
No way, though. This wasn’t a girl you forgot. I was only five seconds into knowing her, but I already knew that much.
“I need you to come with me,” she said. “Right now.”
“I bet that line works on all the guys.”
Like I said, no game, but she was intimidating as hell. The party swirled behind her, all grinding bodies and thudding music, but she stood there as still as a lighthouse.
“This isn’t a joke.” She glanced toward the front door. “We have to get out of here or you’re going to get hurt.”
I laughed. “Sorry … what?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t know anything, do you?”
That didn’t sit great with me. It struck a nerve that was already pretty raw. “I know a few things.”
“Then why haven’t you found the others?”
“Oh, wait. This is about the others?” I straightened off the wall. “I can explain that. See, I tried to find them but the spaceship left right when I got there. Just took right off. Can you believe the others did that to me? Flaky bastards.” I was being a smart-ass, but I didn’t want her to leave. “Look, what do you say we try this again?” I held out my hand, because why? I guess I wanted to make this more awkward. “I’m—”
“Gideon. I know,” she said. Her palm closed over mine, her fingers taking a firm grip of my hand. “I’m Daryn. Let’s get out of here.” She did a one-eighty, still holding on to my hand, and started towing me toward the front door.
I needed a second to process a lot of things. Her crazy behavior. The fact that she had a guy’s name. The fact that she knew my name. The fact that she was taking me … where? And that it should’ve felt like a good thing, an awesome thing, but somehow didn’t.
She stopped suddenly. I ran right into her back.
“Whoa, sorry,” I said, but she wasn’t paying any attention to me.
The front door of the apartment had just swung open. Three people entered, two guys and a girl. Adrenaline roared through me. I knew instantly, on a primal level, something was about to go down.
The first guy was in his mid-twenties. Short black hair, and the kind of face that had to make life easier for him. His clothes were pretty slick, modern, and he was built. He had me by thirty pounds at least, but that didn’t necessarily worry me. I could handle myself in a fight. What worried me was that he looked like he could handle himself in a fight, too.
Behind him stood a shorter guy, slight build, hunkered inside a suit that was a few sizes too big. He had stringy brown hair, the cratered skin of someone who’d fought hard-core acne, and glassy black eyes that cast anxiously around the apartment. He reminded me of a possum. The girl was average height and size, around my age, with red hair in a ponytail and tons of piercings—eyebrows, nose, lip. She carried herself with the same fearlessness as Daryn—who I noticed no longer looked fearless.
“Gideon, run,” she said, pushing me back.
The tall guy homed in on her immediately, like she was the only person in the room. He said something to the other two, and they locked in too.
Daryn kept telling me to run, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Retreat wasn’t my style, and she was in trouble of some kind. I didn’t stop to consider that she was a total stranger, that maybe she deserved what had just shown up at the door, that maybe I shouldn’t have gotten involved.
I moved right into action.
CHAPTER 10
I’m going to tell you right up front, Cordero. The tall guy’s name is Samrael. I don’t want to keep calling him “Tall Guy” because … I don’t know. It’s dumb. For that matter, the girl with the red hair was Ronwae, and the possumy guy with the acne and the shifty eyes, that was Malaphar.
Don’t worry. You’ll know them all soon enough. Plus four more because there are seven in the Kindred. Seven total. But I’m skipping ahead again.