“Answer the question.” The man sounded impatient. “Would you like to trade yourself?”
“Tick tock, big boy. Simple question. Needs a simple answer.”
Oddly, Tucker thought of his father in the following moments. Thought of him at the home they shared, in the barn out back, babbling to himself, making notes. Staring at screens and holding his breath every time he thought the seismograph moved. Trying to make contact. Desperate for interaction with other beings.
Could these be them? The other beings his father swore were out there? The creatures from another planet that his father believed had taken his mother away?
After a decade of nodding through his father’s ramblings, Tucker was floored to even be considering the possibility. But hell, his heart was beating like it never had before. He was in fucking danger, plain and simple. His body and mind and gut knew it. Their gazes cut through him like a warm knife through cake, dead, blank, but highly intelligent—and that wasn’t good. Wasn’t right.
“Are you aliens?” Tucker whispered.
That set them off laughing again.
Just as fast, they turned serious. “No.”
“Good try, though.”
Tucker stepped back, put up his fists. He’d never fought with anything else and didn’t have time to learn a new method, even though he sensed with every fiber of his being that fists weren’t going to do the trick. “Me or them? Take me. Let’s go.”
One of them tilted his head. Too far. Too quickly. “You realize this means your death, don’t you?”
“You know, it might be kind of funny to leave him pudgy for eternity.”
Tucker glanced behind the men and saw the second driver had roused, was beginning to sit up, bloody but alive. Tucker looked to his right at three unmoving bodies. And he knew, he knew these strangers were going to kill him. There was no way out of it. Any men who were capable of something so sinister, so violent would have no qualms killing a man.
But furthermore…these weren’t normal men.
When they smiled at him, fangs protruding in slow motion from their gums, that theory was set in stone. It was either a dream, a hell of a party trick, or these dudes were other. There was a word for them winging around in his skull, but even in those dire circumstances, he couldn’t bring himself to believe anything so absurd.
The men swapped places at a sickening rate of speed, leaving outlines of their silhouettes in the air, like smoke. Approached him without moving their feet.
Tucker’s whole body went cold. Instinct warned him he was in a point of no return.
I should have tried harder.
I should have made a home, grown up, done something better with my time.
Maybe this is it. Maybe this is all I can do.
“Run,” Tucker roared, loud as possible, making sure to lock eyes with the drivers who were helping each other to their feet now. “Run!”
And then Tucker took off toward the river as fast as he could, knowing he’d be caught, but if he could just draw them away from the crowd, even just divert their attention for a few minutes, he’d do it. He’d finally find a purpose.
It didn’t take long for them to catch up and set upon him, but the distant roar of engines and burning of rubber comforted Tucker when the fangs sank into his neck, rendering him paralyzed. His final breath—as a human, anyway—carried one word with it, mired in disbelief.
“Vampires.”
Chapter 2
Present Day
Why did there always have to be a quest?
Vampires and their endless drama.
Humans were out in the real world running around, trying to figure out ways to stay alive longer. Juice diets and squats and vitamins. Little did they know immortality was exhausting and they should count their lucky stars to be decomposing. They should really just relax.
What Tucker wouldn’t give to chill out with a cold one. Put his feet up somewhere, order a meat lover’s sub and not have to worry about retrieving some majestic item from one location and delivering it to another. God. Was the world ever actually ending? Or were immortals just bored? Could they put quests to a vote?
All those in favor of putting a moratorium on epic journeys, say aye.
Aye.
That vote would have to go on the ballot a different time, unfortunately, because tonight, he and his friends were on—you guessed it—a quest.
Tucker raked a hand down his face and followed the weird fae lady through Enders, a packed slayer bar in Coney Island, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure Elias and Roksana were being allowed through the angry mob without incident. Roksana wasn’t exactly popular among her colleagues at the moment, considering she was a slayer who’d fought on the side of the vampires last time they were in this establishment, thus betraying the slayer credo: Always be killing vampires.
Currently, Elias was pretending to hold Roksana captive. She was posing as an offering to Tilda, the fae owner of Enders, so they would be allowed entry. It was easy to see the ruse was wearing thin on Elias. Even the pretense of harming his mate was unacceptable.
What must that level of devotion to another being feel like?
Tucker would probably never know. He was as hopeless with females as a vampire as he’d been as a human. Both of his best friends had found their mates—human ones, at that—and he was the perpetual the fifth wheel. A role he’d become comfortable playing. The driver. The one who picked up the slack while his friends went around being lovesick idiots, volunteering him for quests and other bullshit when all he really wanted was a nap.
Damn. Remember naps?
Tucker sighed long and loud, but kept strutting, winking at a particularly angst-ridden slayer who took great pleasure in brandishing his stake. “Beautiful,” Tucker mouthed, slapping a hand to his chest. “Five stars. Great craftsmanship.”
The slayer hissed at him and Tucker chuckled.
Lord, the drama.
Tucker, Elias and Roksana were in Enders tonight to retrieve something called the game piece. In order to induce Tilda, the fae, to hand it over, they were exchanging a marriage decree they’d won at a poker game in Moscow. Did shit get any more complicated than that?
Oh, wait. The marriage decree was for Tilda’s daughter, Mary the Mad.
Mary. The. Mad.
Because sure. Why not?
Tucker was there tonight as backup. An extra pair of fangs and fists. No quest directly involved him, after all. He was a side player. A facilitator. The universal ride. He was on everyone’s speed dial when the shit went down.
Just once, he’d love his phone to ring so someone could pass on good news.
Hey Tucker, you won’t believe this. The world didn’t end.
Yo, T, vampires can taste sandwiches again.
T-man, did you hear? We don’t disintegrate in the sun anymore. Let’s go to the beach.
Those were calls he would love to receive.
Instead, when he hit talk, a calamity was befalling such and such, specifics were involved, the end was nigh. Sometimes he even had to do math. Not ideal.
To be fair, this quest was on the more serious end of the scale. Roksana needed to trade the marriage decree for the game piece and get it back to Moscow. Like now.
Otherwise she’d be killed.
That was the other thing about quests. Not completing them meant serious consequences.