The stripper hadn’t helped the couple. Tina wasn’t real big into helping others, but she’d given him the information, for a price.
Finding prey is always the best part.
“How do you … know me?”
For fun, he squeezed Mike’s broken hand. When big Mike hissed in pain, his men swore and came at Carlos.
“Don’t.” His snapped order. He dropped Mike’s hand and faced them all, his back to the bar. Carlos lifted his hands, palms out, and made sure that his claws weren’t showing. “I’m not here to fight you.” Yet.
His gaze met Mike’s fuming stare. “I’m looking for the woman who broke that hand.”
Surprise flashed on Mike’s face. Then he smiled. A twisted, broken smile. “Hoss, there’s no way you could handle her.”
Carlos let his gaze sweep the bar. Only a few other stragglers remained, and they were high-tailing it out because they thought a fight was coming.
Maybe.
“Let me be the judge of that,” he murmured.
“Dumbass, you don’t get it.” Big Mike stabbed a thick finger—one from his left hand, not that swollen right—into Carlos’s chest. His voice dropped as he said, “That bitch ain’t even human.”
So what? Was he supposed to act surprised? No, not his way. Carlos nodded. “Si, I know. That’s why I want to take her out. She killed mi hermano—my brother in Mexico.”
The men around him all glanced at Big Mike.
Mike swallowed. “Mine, too.”
What? Really? Carlos almost smiled. Talk about a f**king perfect cover story! He couldn’t have planned that one better.
“I want her to pay,” Carlos said and let his voice vibrate with fury. “I want her to hurt, I want her to beg, and I want her to pay.”
“Good luck.” Mike rubbed the stubbly line of his jaw. “That vamp’s got some kind of guard dog—bastard won’t let anyone close.”
Carlos tried very hard not to let his excitement show at that news.
“Probably uses him for f**king and sucking …” One of Mike’s gang muttered.
Probably.
“He’s the one who broke my hand, because I was touching his whore,” Mike said.
“Gettin’ ready to stake her …” This came from the same guy who’d spoken before, the one with a big red lump on his forehead.
Big Mike grunted. “He took us all out.” He waved a hand toward his tight-jawed men. “If we couldn’t take him, you damn sure ain’t gonna have any better luck with the guy.”
Maybe. “I will if you help me.”
Now that had Mike looking interested.
“Your mistake was that you tried to take ’em down when they were together.” Huge mistake, especially for humans going up against supernaturals. “We need to separate them.”
Mike started nodding.
“We want the vamp, right? She’s our target.” The idiot would believe anything he said then.
Mike licked his lips. There were murmurs from the men. A few “damns straights” and one “fuck, yeah.” After a minute Big Mike said, “Yeah, that bitch is the one I want to stake.”
“You’ll get your chance.” Eventually. “But first, we’ve got to break them apart. Break them apart, make them weak—then we attack.”
Because Nicole St. James, killer and Taken vamp, wouldn’t be nearly as fierce on her own. Not once she lost the angel on her shoulder.
“So how we gonna do it?” Mike wanted to know. “How the hell are we supposed to get her away from him?”
Now that was the hard part. But, luckily, he had a plan. “Leave that to me. You just get your men ready to jump her.”
Lie. Lie.
Mike and his men were his plan. They were his bait and his distraction. Because Nicole and her angel would be so focused on them, well … the vamp wouldn’t even realize the true danger until it was too late.
“We’ve got to act fast,” he said. “We’re gonna need to attack before the sun sets.” No sense in going up against a stronger vamp. Not while there was still daylight left.
“You know where she is?”
Shifters had good noses for a reason. They were the best at tracking. Once he’d caught her scent at Temptation, he’d followed her all the way back home.
He’d always had the strongest nose in the pack. Blood, fire, and sex—it wasn’t easy to miss that combination. Tracking Nicole had been f**king child’s play.
“I know.” He smiled. “Now let’s go and drag that bitch into the sunlight.”
Nicole woke, her heart racing, her body shaking as the nightmare still played in her mind.
The alley. The blood. The monster.
She sucked in a deep breath.
She’d been the monster.
“Nicole?”
Her head turned. Keenan lay beside her in bed, his chest naked, and the sheet loose around his hips. She swallowed. “Ah, it’s nothing …” It was still daylight. She could see the sun trickling through the blinds, could feel the weakness in her body. He’d chosen to sleep in the day? With her?
The lump in her chest had nothing to do with her nightmare.
“Something scared you,” he said.
Me. I scare myself. I have for a while now.
His fingers brushed down her arm and she shivered. “It—it’s really nothing—”
“Liar.” The word sounded like a caress. “Tell me about it.”
The drumming of her heartbeat wasn’t slowing down. She pulled the covers up and held them with tight hands. Right then, she needed some kind of shield, and it was the cover or nothing. “Before I was attacked, I-I didn’t even know I could kill.”
“Everyone can kill. People just have to be pushed hard enough,” he said flatly. There was a lot of dark knowledge tinting his voice. But then, he’d probably seen everything humans had to offer. Good. Bad. All that waited in between.
Death.
Right. He’d know all about killing.
“You said you saw me … before.” Before she’d gotten the stylish new fangs, the bad manicure, and the pretty much unquenchable thirst for blood.
“Yes.”
“She never would have ripped a man’s throat open. Not once.” Her voice dropped. “Twice. I killed two humans.” And one vampire.
“You were under compulsion, you didn’t—”
“I-I … liked the blood.” This was the darkest part of her confession. Her gaze dropped to the hands that balled the sheets. “I liked the rush of blood, the power. I wanted to stop. I knew it was wrong. I knew I was killing them and that voice was in my head, pushing me … but I liked the blood.”