A sweep of red hair brushed Cooper’s cheek.
“Oh, enough, bloody enough!” He did not need to be saved by a woman!
Cooper bashed his forehead against a vampire’s skull. His brain reverberated in his head. The bloodsucker’s skull was hard! A shove of his hand—he didn’t touch the vamp’s chest—sent the creature flying away and crashing against the ceiling. The vamp dropped hard.
Pyx gripped the other vampire by the throat and slammed him against the cement wall. “Who sent you?”
Interrogation. Good idea, Cooper thought. Glad he’d thought of it.
The fallen vamp lunged, aiming toward Cooper.
He made a tight, straight spade of his fingers and shoved them into the vampire’s chest. The creature yowled. Cooper gripped the heavy mass of hot muscle. A gut kick sent the vampire stumbling backward.
Blood oozed over Cooper’s fingers and dripped onto the floor. The vampire whose chest was now empty of his heart ashed, as did the heart in Cooper’s hand. Slimy ash-drenched blood oozed in splats onto the cement floor near his boots.
The other vampire spat in Pyx’s face. She swiped the bloody spittle away and then pounded a wooden stake into the vamp’s chest. It took a lot of force to put a piece of wood through ribs and muscle. Pyx made it look as if she was spearing an olive with a toothpick.
Ash spattered into the air. The Sinistari shook off the gray dust and delivered a triumphant smile to Cooper.
“I do have a stake,” she said, then glanced at Cooper’s bloody hand. “Oh. That’ll work, too.”
Careening around the corner flew two more vamps. Or Cooper confirmed they were of the vampire persuasion when one jumped on Pyx’s shoulders and sank his teeth into her skull above her ear.
Cooper gripped the wood handrail and tore it from the industrial bolts securing it to the wall. He broke it in half and caught the charging vampire in the chest with it.
Pyx spouted every oath in the book as she struggled to detach the fangs and fingers digging into her scalp and throat.
Cooper twisted the thick wooden stake and kicked the dead vampire off from it. Ash dusted Pyx. The vamp gnawing at her skull inhaled a mouthful and choked.
Pyx smashed the vamp against the wall. “Suck on that, longtooth!” It released her, and she scrambled away the direction it had come. A new vampire appeared, saw his retreating cohort, and joined him.
Wielding the stake like a spear, Cooper threw it after the vamps and caught the tip at the back of one’s head. His strength had given the soaring wooden stake rocket power and it entered the vampire’s skull with ease, dropping to the ground in a clatter as the vampire became dust.
Cooper caught Pyx by the shoulder, and when she struggled to race after the final vampire that had gotten away, he twisted her arm around behind her back.
“Get your bloody hands off me!” she cried.
He released her and flicked the blood from his hand against the cement wall. Taking in the surroundings, he listened, confirming no mortals within hearing or eyesight. The bloodstains would raise questions. At least the vamp had ashed and hadn’t left a mangled body behind for someone to freak over.
“Let the longtooth go,” he said. “It’ll run to its master and tell them what a force we are to deal with.”
“It’ll return to its master and give him details,” she hissed.
“Details of what?”
“You!”
Wiping the blood from his hand on his white shirt, Cooper smirked. “They were following you too, sweetie.”
The shirt was a loss and the blood stank. He couldn’t walk around mortals with it in this condition. He shrugged it off, and balled it up. “I’m out of here.”
Pyx kicked the cement wall and growled in frustration. “You’re welcome!” she called in his wake.
She thought she’d saved him? Poor misguided demon.
But Cooper had no intention of hanging around to convince her of her mistake. The day had taken a very wrong turn. And he was not stupid. He needed to put as much distance between himself and the Sinistari as possible.
A schush and clatter signaled the arriving train. Cooper slam-dunked the bloody shirt into a trash can, and jumped onto the train, insinuating himself within the crowd.
It was after midnight. The club rush, both standing and seated, filled the train. Sure he was shirtless and sporting an ash-dusted kilt, but he didn’t raise any eyebrows from those with spiked hair, elaborate makeup or high-cut skirts that dared to show more than tease.
Cooper let out a breath. He’d never run from danger. He had once been the instigator of danger and chaos, and … death.
Those were innate characteristics he wished to change. And he would. He must if he wished to belong. Walking away had been the right thing.
Focus on what can be yours.
Now that his nervous energy had begun to relax, his senses opened wide to his surroundings. He liked the close quarters and the mingling of scents and bodies. A man could fall in love with someone if he closed his eyes and breathed the exotic spice of flesh, perfume and life. Humanity was a marvel.
The doors clattered shut and the car tugged into motion.
Bye, bye, vampires.
Seriously? Vampires? They couldn’t have known they pursued a Fallen one and a demon. Only vampires who would do that were stupid, or ash.
He noticed a smear of vamp blood down the side of his kilt, and turned so that thigh was concealed against the train wall.
A long slender body pressed along Cooper’s backside. She wrapped her arms about his waist and spread her fingers up his chest. The Parisians were so friendly.
Turning, he huffed when he saw Red smiling at him.
“What the hell are you doing?” He tried to shove her off, but it was too crowded. “Don’t press your bits against me,” he whispered by her ear. The man next to him smiled and waggled his brows. “You’re a crazy one.”
“There’s nothing else to hang on to. You don’t want me to fall on top of the old lady sitting behind me, do you?”
“Won’t happen. And don’t try that pouty, innocent look with me. Where do you live? You can’t possibly be going the same direction as me.”
“Nowhere. Only been here a day.”
He’d been here a couple weeks, but already he’d found himself a sweet little place tucked away from the world in the 16th arrondissement, yet still within Metro distance of all the hotspots. And in that time, he’d already slain one Sinistari in much the same method he’d employed against the vamp. Though Sinistari hearts did not bleed and were as strong as
