She’d smiled indulgently and played along for a while. The way she always did when it came to men.
She was a vampire. Charismatic. Mesmerizing. She could be dressed in baggy sweats, having the worst hair day on the planet, and men would still find her irresistible. It hadn’t been a bit surprising that Garret had fallen so hard for her so fast.
No, what had really startled her was what she’d felt for him.
She’d actually liked him.
He’d been a patriot of Texas. Strong. Noble. Courageous. And from the moment he’d walked into the small saloon where she’d been working, aka feeding, she’d been attracted.
So she’d done the unthinkable—she’d slept with him not once but several times. Even more than the sex, they’d actually spent time together.
They’d gone on moonlit walks, held hands beneath the stars and confided their dreams to each other.
Wild, far-out dreams of love and marriage and kids and a real home.
She’d been a newly turned vampire back then, desperate to ignore the truth of what she’d become. Likewise, he’d been a man eager to escape the death and destruction that lived and breathed all around him.
And so she’d pretended, and he’d pretended.
She’d seen the love swimming in his eyes, and she’d let herself believe it was real.
But it hadn’t been.
Not then and certainly not now.
He was no longer a weak human mesmerized by her vampiric charm, and she was no longer denying her true nature.
They were both vampires, fully rooted in the present. When they had sex again, there would be no soft words between them, no foolhardy talk of happily ever after. No false promises.
Just lust.
Raw.
Primitive.
Savage.
If they came together.
The doubt pushed its way into her head as she climbed behind the wheel of her car and keyed the ignition.
There could be no if.
Sex had to be a sure thing, and the lame excuse she’d given him tonight would work in her favor. Pictures meant more than one. Which meant they wouldn’t be spending five minutes together sharing small talk. It would take hours, maybe even days, for her to set up her equipment—the cameras, the lighting, the back-ground—and get just the right shots. She had no doubt that the more time they spent with one another, the more explosive the chemistry would be.
Because he wanted her as fiercely as she wanted him.
Even though she could no longer stare into his eyes and see his every thought—vamps couldn’t read other vamps the way they did humans—she’d seen the telltale spark in his gaze when she’d sat down at his table. She’d felt the rush of jealousy when he’d come to her rescue.
Something was bound to happen between them.
Eventually.
Before Cruz and Molly caught up with her again?
The question struck, and her survival instincts kicked into gear. She swept a glance around her, drinking in the half-full parking lot. Her gaze sliced through the darkness, pushing back the shadows, searching. Her ears perked, and her nostrils flared, but she smelled nothing except stale beer and cigarettes and her grip eased on the steering wheel.
She was safe. She knew it. She felt it.
For now.
Over the past year, it had taken at least a week or two for the other vampires to track her down once she’d given them the slip.
With the exception of their last encounter, that is.
When they’d left her for dead.
She’d been sensationalizing the latest in a string of serial murders in state courtesy of the Butcher.
The Butcher had eluded police over twenty-nine murders, and he was still on the loose. While true crime wasn’t usually something picked up by a tabloid, the Butcher was the exception because he was rumored to be a Hollywood celebrity gone bad. At least that’s what he’d told the world when he’d left a bloody message on the wall of his first victim’s apartment. Every tabloid was now hot on the trail to discovery his identity first. Viv had been covering his handiwork from the beginning, from his first kill down in West Hollywood, to an elderly couple in Portland, to the recent handful of bodies found in an abandoned cabin outside of Tacoma.
She’d been scoping out the actual crime scene when she’d been discovered by local law enforcement, specifically a hard-ass sheriff by the name of Matt Keller. Keller had been about to grill her with questions—who did she work for, how did she hear about the murders, why was she there—when he’d been called back to the police station. He’d threatened to throw her ass in jail for trespassing and then he’d escorted her off the property. His parting words? “Stay the hell away from here.”
She should have listened to him.
Instead, she’d gone back. She’d been snapping pictures when she’d been attacked by the two vampires who’d been hot on her trail for over three years. They’d staked her out on the front porch of the cabin and left her to fry.
But Molly’s aim had been off. The knife had punctured her at an angle, a scant half-inch to the right. Rather than hitting her heart, they’d stabbed the inner right lobe of her lung. While not life-threatening, she’d still been hurt badly. She’d bled all over the porch, her blood mingling with that of the Butcher’s other victims. She would have burned to a crisp at the first sign of dawn if she hadn’t managed to drag herself through the front door. Inside, she’d hidden in one of the closets.
It was there, as she’d cowered beneath a mound of stale clothes, her St. Benedict medal clutched tightly in her hand, that she’d felt vulnerable for the first time in her life. Hurt. Nervous. Scared.
Cruz and Molly wanted their humanity back and they would stop at nothing in their quest to destroy the vampire who’d taken it from them.
She could still see their faces, the first time she’d met them all those years ago. Eighty-seven to be exact. She’d been in some hole-in-the-wall border town looking for her next meal when she’d happened upon a white slavery ring holed up in a house on the outskirts of town.
Molly had been chained in the cellar and Cruz had been one of her abductors. He’d fallen in love with her and tried to help her escape, and so he’d ended up chained next to her.
After a violent encounter with the one guard on duty (the rest of the slave traders had been upstairs passed out from a case of tequila), Viv had freed a cellar full of prisoners made up of primarily women and children.
Most of the prisoners had taken off up the rickety steps, desperate to get away before their abductors sobered up.
Except
