“We should call the police.”
“Give me a minute to find out what it is.” He went to the door. “Stay here.”
As Anne watched him go, every instinct told her to pick up the phone. Call the CPD downtown. The local sheriff. Hell, call the detective(s)—either one or both. Gonzalez or Sulley. She had both their cards…
Instead, she stayed where she was, frozen in her bed, an empty glass of milk clutched tightly in her hands.
The prayer she put up to God made no sense, the entreaty a gobbled-together mess of words covering a multitude of different panics. She was positively dizzy from fear.
As well as the sense that something very, very bad was about to happen.
* * *
The second Darius stepped out of Anne’s bedroom, he smelled it: baby powder and the stink of death combined. For a split second, his brain refused to process the reality that his enemy was in her house. Somehow, someway, a fucking lesser was inside, even though he had no idea how they could have tracked him dematerializing—
Down below, a shadow wheeled by at the foot of the stairs, the dark pattern thrown by someone moving through the living room, just out of view.
Darius briefly closed his eyes. Goddamn it, he’d ghosted out from an open window at the back of his house. Even if some slayers had been staking his location, they wouldn’t have known where he’d ended up—
Creak.
Click.
Abruptly, things got a little darker.
Creak. Click. Creak…
The slayer was going through the rooms and turning off the lights, one by one—and there was no hesitation, as if he knew where the lamps and switches were located. And then a voice, soft, but carrying far enough for Darius to hear:
“Anne, oh, Annnnne. You’ve left out a mess here in the kitchen.”
A warning rode up the back of Darius’s neck. Anne?
How the fuck did that slayer know her name—
Something simmered just below his consciousness, something that he knew he should remember.
“I always told you… open jars must be capped properly and put away. Peanut butter and jelly, a loaf of bread left out? Tsk. Tsk…”
Harnessing every protective urge in his body, Darius focused himself and dematerialized down to the first floor. And the instant he re-formed, there was a quick shift in the kitchen, a shadowy figure spinning around to face him—
What the fuck, Darius thought as he recognized the man immediately.
And what do you know, Bruce McDonaldson had the same response, the man pulling a double take.
Except… he was no longer a man, was he.
“You’re a vampire?” the new lesser said with confusion. “And what the hell are you doing in this house—”
Darius pointed his gun at his enemy. “You picked the wrong team, asshole.”
And that was when it came back to him. In a quick flash of memory, he recalled being at the induction site at that farmhouse… and going through some of the clothes that had been left behind. He’d picked up a suit jacket and some kind of instinct had immediately fired—but he hadn’t been able to place it at the time. Now things made sense.
He’d caught Bruce’s scent on the coat. That was what had registered. Except his brain had refused to process the implications of it all because hey, what were the chances that Anne’s ex would become one of the Omega’s new recruits?
Then again, the guy had told her he was destined for bigger things. Usually that just meant snagging a better job, however, not a complete immortal rewiring by a metaphysical source of unfathomable evil.
Fucking hell, Darius thought as the slayer ducked into another room and turned off the final lamp.
From out of the darkness, a chuckle weaved through the still air. “Have you told her what you are, vampire?”
As the man—lesser—kept talking, Darius glanced out the nearest window. The neighbors were close. If he pulled his trigger, it wasn’t going to take long for the cops to get called. Not the kind of peanut gallery he was looking for, especially when there was about to be a stinky, black-oil mess to clean up.
“I asked you a question, vampire,” the disembodied voice demanded. “What have you said about yourself, hmm?”
Darius tucked the gun into his waistband at the small of his back. Then he closed his eyes and concentrated, triangulating the slayer by scent and the source of the chatter…
Locking on its location, he dematerialized into a shallow study. But the lesser was fast, disappearing around a corner, even though it was dark. But then fucking Bruce knew the house by heart, didn’t he.
“You know I’m going to kill her, don’t you,” came the drawl. “I’ve got a score to settle with the bitch.”
The slayer was moving again, and Darius prayed he didn’t take to the stairs. But that had to be where he was headed. He had to know Anne was up in her room—
“Cat got your tongue, vampire?”
One last chance, Darius thought as he closed his eyes again. He had only one more opportunity to—
Some sixth sense directed him, his body disappearing and traveling back where they had started, in the kitchen… where he re-formed right behind the now-undead. By the bread Anne had taken out to make sandwiches after all the lovemaking.
No time to waste.
As the lesser focused ahead on the living room, Darius threw out his arm, snagged a hold around that throat in the crook of his elbow—and choked the fuck back, locking a grip on his own wrist for better leverage. The response was a furious battle, the former Bruce McDonaldson slapping and kicking, the slayer far stronger than the man had been, but not yet fully within the power granted unto him by the Omega’s conversion. That would come within a couple of days.
Assuming he “lived” that long. Which he wasn’t going to.
Banging into cupboards, the fridge, the table, things clattered and fell and broke, and then Darius smelled peanut butter as the open jar of Jif landed on the floor. After that there was clanging, like they had hit pans, a scattering, too, across the linoleum—
Darius shouted as a set of teeth bored into his forearm, and in response, he spun the lesser around and shoved him face-first against the wall. A picture fell and crashed.
Replay of what had gone down back at that apartment. Except oh, God, this was Anne’s place.
Stay upstairs, he prayed. Just stay where you are, sweetheart—
The lights came on overhead. And as the glare blinded them both, he cursed. Anne was standing just inside the room, a pink bathrobe belted around her waist… a gun up and aimed in their direction.
“Bruce,” she said in a voice that wavered. “Stop fighting, I’m calling the police.”
That chuckle returned. At least until Darius drew all the way back on the choking again.
“Don’t kill him, Darius!” she commanded. “I’m going for the phone—”
“No—” As Darius barked the order, she stepped farther into the room. “Anne, go back upstairs—”
“Just hold him where he is—”
Meanwhile, the slayer was still chuckling as he wheezed—and then came a staggering blaze of pain that took Darius’s breath away. As Anne screamed and dived out of sight, he staggered back in shock. He tried to keep his hold, his position, but something wasn’t working right and it was sending him off-kilter—