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“Chase wanted you taken care of. He knew you’d be safe here.”
But the hunters weren’t safe. She was too unstable. Too?—
“You know the first forty-eight hours are the hardest.” Pak, still with those crossed arms and quiet voice. “We’re going to have to keep you under lockdown until we can make sure you’re not?—”
Insane. Driven crazy by bloodlust and power. A freaking killer who would slaughter everyone and everything in her path.
“I know you gave Zane kill orders,” Pak said, and Jude sucked in a sharp breath.
“What the hell?” Jude’s claws sprang out.
“But you’re not dying yet,” Pak told her.
“I’m already dead!”
He inclined his head toward Jude. “Lock her up. And, do whatever you have to do, but keep that demon away from her.” A pause. “For now.”
Because if she went bad, if she couldn’t keep her control, Zane would come for her. He’d given her his word, after all, and one thing about that demon, he always kept his word.
Unlike Simon…I’ll find you. Sooner or later, she’d find her lover and make him pay.
* * *
“You don’t smell like a vamp,” Jude said four nights later when he led her out the back door of Night Watch. His nostrils flared a bit and he leaned in close. “Damn, woman, you just smell, hell, like you.”
Dee glanced his way, then turned to stare at the long, dark street. Since the moment she’d awoken, Pak had kept her under close scrutiny. He’d watched her. Fed her. Helped her to focus the chaos in her mind that came from the enhanced senses and the fears.
Just like before, Pak had taught her.
Not how to hunt this time.
How to live as a vampire.
“Pak told me that a vamp’s scent changes,” Dee said, not sure she understood why she wasn’t reeking like a corpse. “Those bastards that hunt and rip apart humans, they stink of death and decay.”
“Because they have no soul left,” Pak announced, his low voice coming from behind them. Dee didn’t glance back. She’d known he was there. It was too easy to catch even his soft footfalls now.
“My grandfather once said that when the Taken lose their humanity, they become no more than the walking dead.”
His grandfather had been a Choctaw shaman, so Dee figured the guy had known a thing or two about the walking dead.
“You still have your soul, Dee. Your mortal life is gone, but you’re still the same inside.”
Yeah, right. She just had a few flashy additions on the outside. New teeth. New nails. New eyes.
Taken. Why had Simon changed her? “Why not just leave me to die?” she asked the night. Her hands clenched into fists.
No answer. Dee hadn’t really expected one.
“You’ll hunt now.” Pak sounded certain.
She would, because there was still a job to do.
“According to our intel, the Born Master left the city.”
A great stroke of luck for them. Because she sure hadn’t been up to hunting the last few days.
“We can’t risk him coming back,” Jude noted grimly.
