“Tucker?”
“When I tell you to, I need you to get under the table and stay there, Mary. Hands over your head. Do you understand me?”
The tempo of her breathing escalated. “Yes.”
Tucker picked up his discarded spoon and held it at chin level, using the reflective metal to watch for movement behind him. It was no coincidence that these clowns were in the same middle of nowhere diner as him and Mary. The slayers had followed them. Or been alerted of their whereabouts by someone who’d spotted them between here and New York. One or the other. The slayer network was vaster than anyone realized and Tucker was nothing if not recognizable. Hell, he worked for the king and dressed like a drug dealer. Pretty hard to miss.
As the three figures remained in place, Tucker took a mental catalogue of the situation.
The fae had been allies of the slayers, right up until Tilda bounced over to the dark side. To Hadrian’s side. Had the news spread through the underworld already? Was Mary no longer safe from the slayers?
To say nothing of him—a vampire. He’d never be safe from them. Not as long as he walked the earth, but that was the least important thing on his mind at that moment.
There was only her.
His back teeth ground together. Hard.
Company policy was to leave the slayers alive, since they were humans, but if they tried to harm Mary, it would be game over.
He’d deal with Jonas’s disappointment and potential penalty later.
Through the chorus of a sizzling stove and Willie Nelson’s voice, Tucker listened for the tiniest hint of the air changing. And when it finally did, it happened fast. The bodies reflected in the spoon loomed closer and Tucker growled, “Now, Mary.”
No sooner did she disappear beneath the table did Tucker kick up and out of the booth, hitting his first assailant with a spin-kick to the jaw. With bone crunching under the arch of his foot, he was already launching the next attack, using the flat edge of his hand to send the second attacker’s jugular into the back of his neck.
He leaned back just in time to avoid a stake.
It whizzed past his face from the left, arcing down toward his chest. Mary’s cry painted the air—and that’s when the world seemed to break down into tiny little molecules. Something wild and hot and sharp lanced him in the middle. He detected flavors in the air. His senses were already extremely well-tuned, but they reached another level of accurate when her distress reached his ears. She’s in danger. They are putting her in danger.
In Tucker’s periphery, he saw that everything in the restaurant had lifted. Ketchup bottles, napkin holders, silverware. The milkshake machine was sputtering, shooting ice cream onto the atmosphere, white glops changing shape behind the counter like miniature ghosts. Plates of food rose from tables, every object hovering in the air, as if awaiting his command.
His fingertips buzzed.
And he had an uncharacteristic taste for violence.
A snarl curled his lip and he plucked the stake from the slayer’s hand, bringing the blunt end down hard on his head, rendering him unconscious. With one assailant down, he threw an elbow backward and shattered the cartilage of a nose. In the split second it took Tucker to deal with the second man, the third took a step in Mary’s direction and said, “There she is. Tilda’s brat,” sneered the slayer, eyes bright with fight-lust. “Your mother thinks she can switch allegiances so easily? She won’t for long. Time to send a little message.”
Every window in the diner blew out.
Car alarms screamed in the parking lot.
Everything that had been suspended in mid-air exploded, letting loose a deafening roar of breaking glass and debris landing on walls, the floor. The other customers in the diner dove out through the broken windows, the waitress following suit. And there was a part of Tucker that was alarmed by this side of himself—because it was definitely him commanding the objects. Projecting his outrage into the immediate area and causing destruction. It was all him.
Because Mary was under threat.
His hand shot out and caught the one who dared advance on her. Caught him around the neck and lifted him off the ground. He experienced a bloodlust like he’d never felt before and it would have been so easy, so easy to flick his wrist and end this sucker’s life. He deserved it for wanting to harm the girl. But Tucker saw Mary huddled beneath the table, his name on her trembling lips, and the ringing in his ears thinned, the taste for vengeance souring in his mouth.
Without taking his gaze from Mary, he threw the man headfirst through the blown-out window, already reaching for her. Lunging for the fairy and dragging her up into his arms. Holding her against his chest, crowned head tucked under his chin, ready to kill anyone who tried to take her. His boots crunched on glass as he stomped out of the diner and into the parking lot, his body shaking, blood dripping from his knuckles.
What was happening to him?
What was happening?
His instinct was to put her in his Impala and get the fuck out of there. But he must have retained some semblance of sanity, because he didn’t. No. He couldn’t. His car keys, all of her things, were still in the motel room next door.
Mary wrapped her arms around his neck more securely, her face pressed to his neck, and the hunger damn near brought him to his knees.
Nearly at the motel room door now, Tucker’s palm cradled the back of her head, massaging her skull gently. “Mary…”
“Uh-huh?” His fangs descended, his vision doubling. “What was that?”
“My fangs.” Tucker stroked her hair with more force than he should have, making her suck in a breath, her body turning tense in his arms. Cursing, he set her down outside the motel room door and fumbled with the lock. “I’m sorry. It hasn’t even been that long since the last time I fed.” His voice dropped. “It’s not usually like this.”
But there was a dawning sense of understanding in the back of his mind.
His new abilities. Abilities that only manifested with Mary in danger.
The unbelievable yearning for her blood.
Fate couldn’t be this cruel, could it?
As soon as they were in the motel room, shut away from potential human witnesses, Tucker set Mary down on the bed and let his vampiric speed kick in. He threw articles of clothing and toiletries into Mary’s suitcase, locked it and snatched up his keys. When he would have thrown Mary over his shoulder and got the hell out of Dodge, he skidded to a stop to find her blocking the door, her lips parted slightly, eyes wide and unseeing, her hand extended in his direction. “Tucker, what happened in the diner? The explosion. Th-the glass breaking…it wasn’t my scream, was it? It didn’t feel like me…”
It went against everything inside of him to lie. To use her blindness as a means of keeping the truth hidden. It made him sick. But what was his other option?
Tell Mary she was his mate?
That a vampire generated deadly new talents that only emerged with their mate in jeopardy? He couldn’t even count on two hands the amount of problems it would lead to. Chiefly along them all, he didn’t want Mary feeling conflicted. To feel beholden to him in some way.
When a vampire found his mate, it wasn’t exactly a casual arrangement. It was an irreversible joining. A sealing of fate. There was no separate vacations or goodbye pecks on the cheek. If there was a separation, it went beyond the typical definition of torture. Worse, if a vampire fed from his mate, he could no longer be sustained by any other blood but hers. Once it passed his lips, he would die without it. Slowly and painfully.