She smiled. “I’m fine, thank you.”
Seth returned his attention to Bastien. “You have company.”
Bastien looked at Melanie.
“Not her,” Seth said with exasperation. “A handful of vampires are headed this way. You’ll hear them momentarily.” He reached out and touched Tanner’s shoulder.
“Wait!”
“What?”
Bastien stared at him. “What are you doing? Aren’t you going to take Dr. Lipton with you?”
“No. I want her to continue monitoring you.”
“While I’m fighting vampires?” Bastien asked incredulously.
“She’s been trained.” Seth looked at Melanie, who nodded she was okay with it.
Then Seth and Tanner disappeared.
Bastien couldn’t believe it. He turned to Melanie. “What did he mean you’ve been trained?”
She shrugged sheepishly. “I can kick ass.”
She said it with such reluctance that Bastien felt a rush of amusement. His lips twitched as he fought a smile.
“What?” she demanded with a frown. “You think I can’t?” She crossed her arms in a defensive pose that only drew his attention to her lovely breasts.
“No, it’s just . . .” Eyes up. “You looked so chagrined when you said it, like someone admitting they’d just farted or something.”
She laughed and lowered her arms. “It just felt weird to say it. I’ve never been comfortable tooting my own horn.”
Something as simple as her smile should not make his heart race and his body react in unsuitable ways. It really shouldn’t.
But it did. It also cast a spell that made it impossible for him to avoid smiling back.
This was not good.
The sounds of several bodies approaching through the trees reached his sensitive ears. Five vampires ambled in their direction. They were still a couple of miles away and seemed to be in no hurry. The scent of blood—several types—accompanied them. They must be fresh from feeding.
Very odd. The insanity that infused vampires was usually accompanied by extreme paranoia that prevented them from getting along. Even the vampires who had banded together under Bastien’s rule had only refrained from attacking each other over the least provocation because they feared what Bastien would do to them. He hadn’t lied when he had told the others that vampires had to fear you to follow you. Like the vampire king, Bastien had had to make an example of a few before that fear had solidified. He hadn’t done so with a machete. But it had nevertheless been unpleasant.
“What is it?” Melanie asked. She had the loveliest brown eyes.
Keep your head in the game!
“Five vampires, fresh from feeding.”
And damned if it didn’t sound like an ordinary bunch of guys out killing time until the next movie started at the nearest theater.
This could potentially be interesting.
He would’ve looked forward to the confrontation if he weren’t concerned for Melanie’s safety. “What kind of training are we talking here?” he asked. “Self-defense?” He needed to know just how vulnerable she would be when the vampires attacked. He’d like to think they wouldn’t, that he would luck out and find new allies on his first night searching, but vampires always attacked. If they didn’t, they were plotting something.
“Self-defense,” she confirmed. “Martial arts. Weapons. Speaking of which, I’ll need to borrow a few. I don’t usually carry when I’m at work, because Mr. Reordon doesn’t want Cliff and Joe to get their hands on them.” Expression brightening, she reached into her back pocket and pulled out what looked like three EpiPens, but were—he assumed—auto-injectors packing the tranquilizer. “Except for these.”
Bastien considered them thoughtfully. Three auto-injectors. Five vampires. He could work with those numbers. Perhaps he could begin to forge ties with the vampires tonight after all.
“I tell you what . . .” He drew his katanas and gave them a twirl. “Do you know how to use these?”
“Of course.” Her pragmatic response, utterly devoid of boasts, convinced him she spoke the truth. Richart’s Second crowed about his skills all the time, but Bastien had yet to see the boy win a single sparring match.
“Then I’ll trade you these for those.”
Melanie eyed his weapons. “I’d rather have the daggers.”
Smiling, Bastien returned the katanas to their sheaths and drew a dagger from the loops sewn into the lining of his coat.
Melanie offered him the auto-injectors with a sly smile. “You work fast.”
His pulse picked up.
When he didn’t respond, she motioned to the forest. “Already planning to recruit?”
He shrugged and studied the auto-injectors. Melanie was just too irresistible at the moment. “No point in waiting, really. How do these work?”
“Remove the red cap, press the tip against their skin, and hold it for three seconds.”
Bastien removed all of the red caps. “Three seconds is a long time.”
He could cross a football field from end zone to end zone in three seconds.
“I know. But usually auto-injectors take ten seconds to deliver a full dose. I cut it down as much as I could.”
He nodded and handed her another dagger. Then another. And another.
Each one she tucked into a different pocket.
The vampires were close enough to catch Bastien and Melanie’s conversation now.
He caught Melanie’s attention, touched his ear, then motioned to the forest on the east side of the clearing.
“It was the vampire king’s fault,” he said, beginning his performance. “He should never have believed the lies.”
She nodded. “He’d be alive today if he hadn’t. He and his army.”
The vampires stopped moving. Their voices hushed.
“It’s the old sleight-of-hand trick,” he went on. “Keep the vampires’ attention focused on the immortals—”
“And they’ll never see the new enemy coming,” Melanie finished, her soft, warm voice filled with regret.
“Vampires as a whole will be as easily extinguished as the vampire king and his army. Immortals, too.”
A nearly silent conversation began among their audience.
“Most vampires think the Immortal Guardians quelled the king’s uprising.”
“Some know the truth. But not enough. The immortals never would have achieved victory if so many of the vampire king’s followers had not already been destroyed,” Bastien lied.
“Well, now that vampires no longer have a leader, I don’t know how to warn them.”
Foliage rustled as the vampires put on a burst of speed and raced for the clearing.
Bastien moved to stand in front of Melanie, then cursed when she took two steps to the side and frowned up at him.
Reddish leaves already loosened by the cool weather burst from the bushes on the east side of the clearing and tumbled to the ground like candy from a piñata.
Dirt rose and fell in a cloud as the vampires skidded to a halt and faced them, all in a line, hands at their sides as if they were gunslingers preparing for a showdown.
Rather slovenly gunslingers.
Sans guns.
The vamps ranged in size from Melanie’s height—roughly five foot five—to nearly Bastien’s height of six feet and possessed the standard rangy, never-lifted-a-weight-in-their-lives build undisguised by baggy jeans. The blond wore a leather jacket he had probably filched from one of his victims. His auburn-haired friend wore a Carolina Panthers sweatshirt. The third vamp, whose short, raven hair was slicked back with what looked like an entire can of Murray’s Pomade, wore all black. Black pleather pants. Black dress shirt. Black pleather tie. Black belt. Shiny black loafers. Bastien couldn’t decide exactly what look the vamp had been going for, but he’d missed it whatever it was.
The other two vamps, who Bastien surmised had not been vamps for very long, wore matching Tar Heels sweatshirts.