“She wasn’t coming at me, Kit.”
“Shut up.” I held out my hand for his axe and shoved the bandana toward him. He accepted it, scowling the whole time. Once I returned the axe, we continued on, side by side, staring at the group on the stage.
They’d noticed us.
Us. Not the vampires who had entered the building with us—the ferals weren’t even taking notice of those three. The two men had split off in opposite directions and the woman had leaped up onto the stage, walking forward in slow, graceful steps.
Another feral one stared at me.
She licked her lips, looked at Doyle, paused, then her eyes came right back to me.
Her entire body quivered and there was blood staining her chin and the front of her shirt. Most of it was dry, too.
From behind her, I heard a soft sob.
One of the other feral vampires made a strange sort of whining sound, low in his throat. I would have expected to hear that sort of noise from a hungry dog, not something that used to be human. Not something that had probably been capable of reason less than twelve hours ago.
At the noise, somebody beyond the wall of feral vampires starting to cry, deep, ugly noises.
“Please stop that,” the woman from House Allerton said in a cool tone. “You excite them when you do it.”
The sobbing continued.
“If you’re going to persist in making yourself appear to be prey, then I’ll order my people to leave you here alone. Is that what you want?”
“Shut that little bitch up!” somebody snapped.
I heard a grunt, followed by a crash.
“Lay a hand on her or anybody else here and I remove it at the wrist.” Those words were delivered in a calm voice—a familiar one. “And bear in mind…nobody is being left here tonight. Unless you plan on killing me as well as the mindless.”
Abraham.
One of the few—very few—vampires I didn’t outright despise on sight was in there.
Hissing caught my ears and I turned to see one of the ferals creeping closer, his eyes cloudy, face a bloody mask. Head cocked, he gave me a quizzical look. And his eyes locked on my throat.
I sighted on his forehead and pulled the trigger.
His head evaporated in a burst of red mist.
The whining on the stage increased, the smell of blood and death agitating the pack.
“How many alive are with you, Abraham?” the woman said.
“Six. Three are human. One is hurt.”
So they had three good bodies, plus our five. And three useless ones. Against…I did a quick look around the room and decided that fate just fucking sucked. There were seventeen feral vampires in this room that I could see.
Seventeen.
The back of my neck crawled and I spun around, weapon raised.
But Doyle had already taken action, axe at the ready. As the vampire’s head and body went their separate ways, he gave me a hard look.
Ignoring him, I focused back on the tableau playing out in front of us.
“I hear rumors that you are rather fast with that weapon of yours.”
Tossing a glance at the woman, I wondered if I was going to like how this played out. “I’m fast enough. Why?”