“Guess we’re even then,” he said and nodded to her.

“We’ll see,” she hedged.

The woman sure could hold a grudge. Same damn long memory as an elephant.

“I’ll go first,” Quinn volunteered cheerfully as if to diffuse the tension. A few seconds later, Amaury’s cell phone rang. Oliver was in place.

***

An hour later, Amaury was back in his top-floor apartment in the Tenderloin, tending to his second- and third-degree burns. The dark in his place soothed him. His electronic blinds had closed automatically seconds before sunrise. They were programmed to lift again shortly after sunset.

The neighborhood was sleazy, but it suited him. At least here, the chance of constantly being surrounded by people in love was remote. Anger, despair, and hunger were the predominant emotions circulating in the neighborhood.

His physical wounds would heal while he slept during the day, but he needed blood to help the process. Unlike many of his friends, he’d never taken to bottled blood and therefore had no ready supply in his home.

But there were tenants in the building. Most of them would be out during the day, but there was one who was almost always at home.

Amaury dragged himself through the dim and windowless stairwell, commanding his aching legs to make it down one flight of stairs. He rang the doorbell and waited. It seemed to take forever until he heard the shuffling of footsteps on the other side. A chain was released a moment later, then the door swung open fully.

The old lady looked like she’d just woken up. She tightened the belt of her bathrobe around her waist.

“Good morning, Mrs. Reid,” Amaury greeted her.

“Oh, Amaury, did you just come back from night shift?” Only now she seemed to take a good look at him and flinched instantly. “Oh, dear, another accident at the factory?”

He’d made up a cover story many years ago, telling her he worked as a night supervisor at a foundry on the East Bay. It would explain why he slept all day and would occasionally come home with injuries.

He nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“You look terrible. Have you seen a doctor?” The old dear was all concerned and sweet.

Amaury hated himself for what he had to do, but he had no choice. He needed blood to heal.

He would make it up to her later. He could lower her rent and even cook her one of his best French dishes. She would like that.

Amaury employed mind control and let himself into her apartment. As soon as he closed the door behind him, he sank his fangs into her neck. Only when her rich blood coated his throat did he realize the extent of his need to feed. Desperate to still his thirst and regain his strength, he took big gulps from her vein.

Six

Nina blamed her informant. He’d clearly sold her out. Why else would she be standing in an alley, staring into the ugly faces of two vampire dudes flashing their fangs at her and bent on kicking her ass? She’d unknowingly walked into a trap.

Well, at least one mystery was solved: not all vampires were handsome. In fact, the taller of the two was butt ugly. His nose was tilted too far upwards, showing his nostrils the way a pig’s snout would look. She certainly wouldn’t have any scruples turning him into dust—that was, if she got a chance. At the moment, that chance looked pretty remote.

Instead of meeting with some low-level criminal who had information on the vampires, her contact, that shitty little weasel, had purposefully let her run into a hastily set trap. If she got out of this alive, she would beat the shit out of that rotten lowlife, even if it was the last thing she did.

Nina didn’t need to glance behind her to know she was at a dead end, literally and figuratively. She stood in one of the many little alleys in the Tenderloin. There was a constant stench of urine, vomit, and alcohol in the neighborhood. The sidewalks were always littered with trash.

Gripping a stake in each hand, she gritted her teeth. Nina was no stranger to fighting. She was extremely agile and was proficient in kickboxing—down-and-dirty style, the way it was fought on the streets, not in the dojos of the fancy gyms. She’d kicked more ass than Jean-Claude Van Damme in any of his B-movies. But this fight wouldn’t be equal. One of the bloodsuckers she could probably defeat, but two at the same time was a challenge she wasn’t keen on facing.

Her palms were sweaty, her heartbeat erratic, but she had no choice. She had to fight. A glance toward the only exit of the alley told her that while there were plenty of cars passing by on the main road, nobody was stopping. The cavalry wasn’t coming.

She knew she had to be smart about it, use brain instead of brawn.