AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As he slipped out of the apartment, he congratulated himself on his mental maturity. Mickey couldn’t have defined such lines, much less stuck to them. His cousin would have fucked a tree if he could have found a knothole.
Descending the building’s common stairwell, he actually smelled the remnants of some people’s dinners, and the fact that the vague aromas didn’t stimulate his stomach in any way was a reminder of how long it had been since he’d used the bathroom. The stuff going on with his body wasn’t natural, it wasn’t normal.
Just like carrying on a one-sided conversation with a stiff and thinking they were a candidate for best friends with benefits.
But this was his life now, wasn’t it.
Down on the street, he looked both ways, and tried to remember where he needed to go. Oh, right. Market.
God, he hoped the car was where he’d left it.
Out of habit, he burrowed into the coat that concealed the weapons he’d hid at his waistband and under one arm, thanks to the female soldier’s holster collection. But the cold didn’t register on his skin, and as he passed a lamppost, he imagined himself just like the metal stalk of the fixture, impervious to freeze or fire.
He wanted to go find Uncle right now, and he started fashioning an if-this-then-that series of choices for murdering the man. He’d been a little sloppy the night before, popping shots at that car all crazy and offhis rocker. He’d have done better to wait until Uncle had gotten out and started walking toward that side door.
Except the vampire had been coming at him, and that—
Ping!
That was the closest thing he could approximate to the sensation that struck him in the chest: It was similar to what had driven him to the bridges the night before, a sudden registry on an air traffic controller’s radar screen.
Stopping on the sidewalk, his head cranked to the right.
His body was next, following the direction of his eyes, a missile directed by a target in its sights.
There was no question, no choice.
Evan changed directions and just had to go with it.
Technically, Shuli was out of a job.
So, yeah, he probably shouldn’t have been in the field.
But come on, people walked the streets of Caldwell after dark for a whole host of reasons. They were going somewhere, like a club—or maybe home after having been out. They were leaving somewhere, like a date that hadn’t ended well, or a hookup that had. They had a broken-down car, a lost dog, a kid who was rebelling.
And he wasn’t in combat dress or anything.
Okay, fine. His hard-core footwear didn’t exactly go with his silk suit or his Alexander McQueen full-length coat—the one that he and the Brother Butch had each sprung for during their last buying trip to Manhattan. There alsomighthave been some click-click-bang-bang accessories that were judiciously hidden because, hey, there was no reason to cause alarm to civilians of either the vampire or the human variety. Plus, he was allowed to protect himself!
The streets were dangerous, after all—
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Shuli stopped. Closed his eyes. Reflected on how, out of all thevoices in the world, there was only one other he’d rather not hear as much. But unlike him, Nate had been permanently suspended instead of only out for a week, so it was not his former best friend.
But naturally, because fate was a fucker who liked to knee him in the balls, that meant that—
“L.W.” He turned around. “Fancy meeting you here.”
The heir apparent was standing in the middle of the side street like his shitkickers were the canine equivalent of a piss stream:This Is Mine.And you had to give the big, nasty fucker his due. The impact of his physical presence was enough to make anybody think to themselves that an about-face and some Nike action were a great idea.
“You’re suspended.”
“You know,” Shuli said, “it’s alwayssogreat to see you. A real kick in the pants. You’re just a mood lifter, vibe shifter, in a good-wood kinda way.”
L.W. started closing the distance, those size sixteens of his crushing through the ice pack that hadn’t given way under Shuli’s weight. Then again, if your bones were made of tungsten and your blood of lead, the ground yielded.
Everything yielded.
