Blood splattered across my face, cool droplets that I wiped away with the hem of my tank top. My heart was pounding—there was a part of me that was afraid of the dogs—but I knew better than to move fast.
“Thanks for the rescue, boys,” I told them, my voice calm.
“What’s wrong with you—” Duncan began. That icy glare turned on me, although I didn’t feel any fear that the hounds would attack me. In fact, they bounded out of the car and each went to his side, turning around and sitting.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” I cut him off.
Despite his cold words and even colder gaze, his hands automatically found the dogs’ heads. He stroked them and played with their ears, and the dogs butted against his legs as if they’d all but forgotten me.
Duncan’s intense gaze, though, never left mine.
“I’ve got to check on my friends,” I said, sliding past him out of the car.
“How peculiar,” he said. “Alisa with friends?”
“Stay right there,” I told him. “Don’t move. I want you to meet someone.”
He scoffed at that.
I ran into the bar, but I couldn’t find Carter and Julian. I glanced around the smoky room where music was blasting and people were playing pool or carrying on colorful conversations, then plunged out through the front doors. Where the hell were they?
I found them mopping up a fight outside the front of the bar. Carter arched his sword through the air, cutting down a vampire. Julian saw a woman at the end of the street who witnessed the whole thing, who saw the bodies scattered across the sidewalk and turned digging into her purse for her phone. He took off running after her to take away her memory.
That was one reason why I could never be with Julian, even though I appreciated our need for a clean-up crew. My own lost memories felt too much like jagged wounds to be with someone who left those holes in other’s minds.
Carter saw me and threw his arm around me, hugging me tight, mindless of the blood that covered us both. “Thank God, you’re okay. They had us made from the beginning.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “They had some kind of potion to take me out, but it didn’t work.”
Carter’s jaw tightened with anger that they’d tried to hurt me, but all he said was, “Of course it didn’t. You’re no mere mortal.”
“I wish.” I spent an awful lot of time bruised up—I was definitely mortal.
Julian headed back toward us, his hands in his pockets. Even though he wore a leather jacket, his dark hair smoothed back from the hard angles of his face in a normal style, he seemed to carry an air of magic.
“Guys,” I said. “My mystery man is back.”
“Let’s go meet him.” Carter sheathed his sword on his back, and Julian touched his back, magicking it out of sight once again. I knelt and tucked my knives smoothly into the tops of my boots.
But when we got around the back of the bar, Duncan was gone, and so were the dogs.
Chapter Four
Azrael
In the middle of the night, I joined Duncan outside a six-story tan-brick building. “How is she?”
“She got into a fight with some vampires,” he said bluntly. “She’s fine.”
Cold fury prickled over my skin. She’d been fighting while I slept? “You didn’t think to mention that?”
“I was the one on watch,” Duncan answered. “There was no reason to disturb you.”
There was no good reason I should be angry with Duncan. I leaned against the brick wall beside him, shoving my hands into my pockets. “What happened to the vampires?”
He didn’t grace that with an answer.
As we waited there, a homeless man took a piss in the alley to one side. There couldn’t be a place more removed from Alisa’s former life of opulence.
“She must be losing her mind, living here.” A distinct pang of satisfaction strummed in my chest, then I realized how ridiculous it was. She’d toyed with my affections and used my weakness for her to destroy my court. I shouldn’t be amused by how far she’d fallen when her only punishment was a cheap apartment and the mortal world.
I should want to destroy her.
Should.
A wayward memory of her rose in my mind. Alisa, glancing at me over her shoulder, a mischievous smile written across her red lips.
Also contained within that memory: Duncan shoulder-checking me, telling me I was an idiot. He’d hissed that Alisa was poison.
Of course she was.
But alcohol was poison too. So was sugar. Everything sweet and addictive was toxic eventually, wasn’t it?
“I don’t think she is.” Duncan watched me, and I knew he was waiting to see how the words landed. “She seems happy enough.”
I scoffed.
“Brace yourself,” Duncan said, “because here’s the strangest part of all. People seem to like her.”
“We liked her.”
“Speak for yourself.” Duncan peeled himself off the wall; he wouldn’t want to explore that perspective any longer. Duncan wrapped hatred around himself like it was his favorite blanket.
Apparently, that was his version of goodbye. He headed down the street, back to the hotel where the three of us had sheltered for now.
I waited until dawn, making sure that Alisa was safe. When the horizon was a mottled bruise of pinks and blues, I decided the princess had slept long enough.
A woman came toward the door of the building, cradling a paper sack of groceries in her arms. I moved quickly toward the door to intercept her, and she turned wide eyes toward me, her fingers tightening on the keys she’d already fished out of her purse.
“I’m friendly,” I told her, letting the truth of it warm my voice. I smiled at her, and her eyes brightened. “I’m going in to surprise an old friend.”
“Okay,” she said agreeably, and held the once-locked door open for me.
Humans are so easy.
I followed her in, then walked up the three flights of stairs to Alisa’s place. The air carried a faint, stale odor. Careful not to brush against the wall or stair railing—I didn’t mind getting dirty in battle, but I wasn’t trying to catch some human disease—I reached the top and headed down the dim hall of faceless doors.
I stopped in front of her apartment and debated whether to let myself in or knock. Letting myself in did promise a certain entertainment value.
But perhaps she really was a poor little lost lamb with no memories now.
The thought brought a wolfish grin to my face. Wouldn’t want to scare her.
I banged on her door. When no one answered, I banged on it some more, until I heard someone curse in the distance, the sound muffled by the door. The voice was soft and feminine, no matter how ugly the string of words that carried to me.
I felt her on the other side, as she hovered in front of the peephole. I stared at it, knowing she was looking through.
After all these years, she got to see me before I saw her.
Then the door was wrenched open.
Alisa stood there with a pink flush staining her cheeks. Her hair should have been lavender, but it was brown instead now and hung loose to her waist, slightly wild from bed, which gave her a wanton look. My gaze roamed down her ribbed tank top and sleep shorts. Her eyes narrowed in response, and her fingers twitched, tightening on the hilt of the sword she carried.