Melissa and Dani had moved to sit at the bar. Dani stood and walked over to join Cassie. Melissa remained sitting for a minute before placing her hands on the bar and rising with lethal grace to stand with the others. Her short black hair had been tucked behind her ears. Her onyx eyes somberly watched them all spread out around the bar again with the couple enclosed in a circle.
Lou stood at her side, his hands in his pockets, and his tawny brown eyes unreadable. His brown hair curled at the collar of his shirt. At six foot, the young Guardian had always been lanky, but once he’d turned eighteen, he’d begun to fill out and become bulkier in build.
Julian turned to Chris before speaking. “I need to know if you think they’re trustworthy.”
Chris’s ability to read others and judge who and what they were was a good way to learn what they were dealing with when it came to this couple. Afterward, Julian would dive into their secrets. He could do this without Chris, or Devon could make them tell the truth about themselves, but seeing into a person’s life was often a lot more revealing and helped him better grasp what someone was truly like.
If he felt they were good to use for this, he would have Devon make them follow through on their mission, but he wanted to know if they were naturally trustworthy too. If they weren’t, he would find other vampires for this purpose.
“Who first?” Chris inquired as he took a step toward the couple.
The woman moved away from him, and the man glanced nervously toward the door. “You won’t make it if you try to run,” Julian promised him. “And once Chris is done, I’ll also be taking a turn at reading you.”
The man’s eyes filled with red, but he thrust his hand out to Chris. Devon and Julian moved closer, putting themselves in a position to jump on either of the vamps and take them down if they made a move to hurt Chris.
“What are you going to do?” the male vamp demanded.
“It won’t hurt,” Chris assured him.
Chris grabbed hold of the vamp’s hand. His eyes closed for a minute before Chris released the man and turned to the woman. She eyed Chris warily before sticking out her hand.
Julian glanced at Quinn when she moved to stand beside him. “If they’re good, we’re being unreasonably mean to them,” she whispered.
He turned his mouth so his lips brushed against her ear when he spoke. “They may not be killers, or they could be, but either way, they were in that hotel tonight, and they stood by as you were abused.”
“They could have been afraid to go against all those other vamps. There were a lot of vampires in that ballroom who were only there because of the prophecy and what Earl was promising them.”
“Fear is not an excuse for cowardice or cruelty, and they were both when they made no move to try to stop what Earl did to you.”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” she murmured.
“Payback’s a bitch. This is what must be done to accomplish what will be a greater good for humans, Hunters, and vampires. Countless lives depend on us succeeding in this. I will do whatever it takes to see that it is done.”
Julian ran his knuckles over her cheek when her lashes fell to shadow her golden eyes. He could feel her turmoil, but she bowed her head and stepped away as Chris released the woman.
“Well?” Julian inquired of Chris.
“They’re not killers, and they’re not brutal. They’re just… here,” Chris replied.
“What does that mean?” Dani asked.
Julian turned to Dani, but whereas before the sight of her had always brought forth the reminder of her betrayal to Cassie, he found the anger didn’t come as it once had. The girl had screwed up royally in the past, but then his past was far more tainted than hers, and Dani had fought for Quinn when Earl had come. A chunk of Dani’s top right ear had been torn away from a bullet that had streaked across her right cheek during that fight.
Her hazel eyes with their gold flecks watched the couple as Chris stepped further away from them. She’d recently bleached her short hair blonde and added rainbow streaks around face. Her eyebrow and lip rings gleamed in the dim lights of the bar.
“It means,” Chris said, “they simply exist. They’ve never stood for anything or against it. I don’t know why they were in that hotel.”
“We have each other,” the woman whispered, and the man clasped her hand. “That’s all we need.”
Mated, Julian realized and exchanged a look with Devon. That would help with his plan. Neither of them would be willing to do anything to risk the life of the other.
“Why were you in the hotel then?” Julian demanded.
“Everyone has heard the prophecy,” the man replied. “Curiosity drew us in, as did the promise of a possible security that none of us have ever had, not even when the ruling Elders were still alive.”
Julian took a step to the right, blocking Quinn from the man’s gaze when he looked to her. The growl rumbling up his chest caused the man’s eyes to dart away.
The woman settled her hand on the man’s arm before speaking. “We didn’t know it was going to be like that in there.”