Shrugging it on, she turned to the multitude of weapons displayed on one wall. Since Krysta, Étienne, and their Second, Cam, often dropped by, Nicole kept the room stocked with enough weaponry and ammo to outfit all of them and then some, so there were plenty of blades for her to slip into the loops and pockets hidden inside her coat. After those, she added a hip-holstered tranquilizer gun. Only one drug in existence could knock out vampires and immortals. And the network had designed a tranq gun that could shoot multiple darts bearing it.
A twinge of guilt pricked her as she headed through the kitchen to the garage. Tessa had seemed sincere when she’d apologized. But that uneasy feeling continued to roil inside Nicole as she ducked into her car and raised the garage door.
She was taking no chances tonight.
She would shadow Sean whether he liked it or not.
Chapter Two
“Nicole doesn’t trust me.”
Sean glanced at Tessa as they strolled along a sidewalk on Duke University’s campus. “What makes you say that?” He thought Nicole had hidden her unease rather well earlier. She had even joked and teased Tessa while arming her.
“I could feel it.”
He frowned. “Are you an empath?” He hadn’t thought to ask Tessa what ability she’d been born with. Immortal Guardians boasted a wide variety of them. Younger immortals like himself usually only bore one gift. Older immortals—those whose DNA hadn’t been weakened by thousands of years of gifted ones marrying ordinary humans—sometimes had several. Seth, the Immortal Guardians’ leader, possessed them all, along with a few no one else did.
“No,” she said, “but I still sensed it.”
He shook his head. “Nicole understands why you did what you did, Tessa. The timing of your visit was off. That’s all. She would’ve reacted better if you’d picked a different night to drop by.”
Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean? Did you two have plans?”
“No. Nothing like that. She’s a gifted one with mild precognitive abilities like Melanie.”
Her eyebrows flew up. “Dr. Lipton has precognitive abilities?”
“Sure. Haven’t you ever seen her reach for the phone right before it rings? That sort of thing?”
She pondered it. “I guess so. I just assumed it was a coincidence—that she wanted to make a call and the phone rang before she could.”
He smiled. “I think you’ll find there isn’t much serendipity in the Immortal Guardian world. Things you mistake for happenstance are rarely coincidences.” As soon as the words left his lips, he frowned. Hadn’t he blithely dismissed Tessa’s sudden appearance occurring alongside Nicole’s premonition as a coincidence?
He shook it off. “Like Melanie, Nicole often gets a bad feeling when something foul is about to go down. And she got one tonight.”
Tessa bit her lip. “Are you sure she wasn’t just anticipating my arrival?”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah. It was something else. Something that hasn’t happened yet. Usually, when she gets these feelings, I end up coming very close to having my ass handed to me.” He smiled. “And since my ass is still intact, I’m going to assume it wasn’t about you.”
She chuckled.
“If you’d rather not hunt with me tonight, though, I’ll understand. Things might get a little dicey.”
“Honestly, that makes me want to hunt with you even more. If something’s coming, I’d like to help you fight it off.”
“You do have mad skills,” he praised. “How’d you come to be so good with blades?”
Anxiety touched her features as she looked away. “I don’t know. Gershom did something. He… meddled with my head and… I don’t know. Mind-controlled me, I guess. One day I couldn’t throw a proper punch, and the next I could kick ass.”
How unsettling must it be for her to know that someone had manipulated her mind to such an extent without her knowledge. “Zach did that once.”
Her head snapped around. “What?”
“Zach did something similar to that. To Dana.”
“He did? Why? Did she ask him to?”
“No. She didn’t find out until later.”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. Why would he do that? I thought Zach was a good guy, one of Seth’s right-hand men.”
“He is,” Sean hastened to assure her. “But Lisette is everything to Zach. And Aidan is important to Lisette. So when Aidan fell in love with Dana and vampires started targeting her, Zach planted what he called a How to Kick Ass manual in her head to help keep her safe.” He grinned. “And boy, did it work.”
That didn’t erase her frown. “Is that something Immortal Guardians do often? Manipulate people’s minds without their permission?”
Crap. He shouldn’t have mentioned it. He had wanted to make her feel better and instead had spawned… what? Suspicion? Disapproval? “No. They don’t. They really don’t. There were extenuating circumstances and—” He broke off when a whimper carried to his ears.
“Oh shit,” a woman whispered.
The sounds of a struggle ensued as a breeze carried the sharp scent of pepper spray to his nose.
He and Tessa shared a look, then darted forward, running so fast that any human they passed would catch only a faint blur of motion.
The scuffling ceased. Silence fell, disrupted by snarled curses.
Sean’s nose twitched as he and Tessa honed in on the source of the pepper and swung around the corner of a building.
Both skidded to a halt and drew shoto swords.
Five vampires who could easily pass as college students lurked in a dark patch the bright campus lights failed to illuminate. Two were bent over, frantically wiping glowing blue eyes. Two more knelt over a couple of unconscious young women, their fangs buried in the victims’ wrists. The last vampire stood tall and held his victim like a lover, his face buried in the crook of her neck. Sean couldn’t see the woman’s face but could tell by her limp arms and the way her head lolled that the vampire had already sunk his teeth deep, the pressure of the bite releasing a GHB-like chemical from the glands above them.
If she wasn’t already unconscious, she would be soon.
The two teary-eyed vamps spun around.
“What the hell?” one blurted upon sighting them.
“Immortal Guardians,” the second sneered, eyes weeping, nose running.
The kneeling vampires leaped to their feet. All four drew big bowie knives.
One attacked Sean. Three attacked Tessa.
He swore. “Kill them. They aren’t worth saving.” When confronted by Immortal Guardians, salvageable vamps either panicked and ran or waited for the immortals to strike first. They didn’t all attack the smaller and—in their minds—easier-to-kill female.
There was no honor in that. Even during Cliff’s worst psychotic breaks at network headquarters, he had never harmed a woman. Neither had Stuart or Miguel.
Sean swung his swords with wicked precision, deflecting blades and scoring hits. Most vampires weren’t well trained, having spent most of the time prior to their transformation sitting on their asses, playing video games, or perusing social media feeds.