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The fire bit his arms and licked across the side of his face. Touching hell. The white-hot pain seared him. It singed skin and lanced flesh in the seconds it took to leap through the fire.
They hit the ground. His arms were burning. The cover surrounding Dee blazed with fire. He rolled her, pounding at the fire, and the dirt flew around them.
The pain—aw, fuck. He sucked in a breath, choked on smoke, and took the hot agony. Used it.
Dee shoved out of the cover. “Simon, what the hell were you?—”
“Fucking bitch!” A snarl, too close.
Simon’s head whipped up, and he saw the vamps closing in. Four of them. The survivors from the alley.
Shouldn’t have let them live. But his priority had been getting Dee the hell away from that place before any of the vamps had been able to make her death permanent.
Mateo came in first. The big, thick Italian was at least a century old, and he had one serious addiction to pain—giving it and hearing the screams of his prey.
He lunged at Dee. The claws of his left hand swung toward her neck even as he brought up his right hand—a hand that Simon knew would be clutching a stake in that bulging fist.
“No! Dee, watch out!” Simon roared.
She twisted, her legs still partially trapped in the smoking covers as she fought to rise.
Simon jumped in front of her, and Mateo’s claws sank into his chest. Shit. His teeth snapped together. Oh, but the bastard had been begging for a killing for far too long.
Simon slammed his head into the vamp’s. Handy little trick he’d learned from Dee.
But Mateo just laughed and that stake came up even as the claws twisted in Simon’s chest.
Okay, a little help would be good right then. “Dee!”
Mateo’s eyes widened. His lips opened as a high, keening cry gurgled up in his throat.
Then he slumped forward.
Simon looked over the stiff man’s body. Saw Dee. Saw her jerk the wooden stake from Mateo’s back. “Don’t worry, I got the heart,” she assured him.
Uh, yeah, he bet she had.
He wrenched the vamp’s hand and the claws ripped from his chest.
Pain blasted through him.
Take it. Use it.
Simon didn’t look down at his body. Couldn’t. Not then. If he saw the damage…
“What are they waiting on?” Dee whispered.
His head shot up. The other three vampires stood less than five feet away. Their claws were out. Their fangs glinted in the firelight.
He knew them all, just as he’d known Mateo.
Katya, the Russian vampiress, an ex-mob boss’s lover. She’d gutted the fool who’d loved her.
Vince, the newbie who’d turned less than a year before. So much bloodlust there, burning in his eyes.
And Leo, tall and dark, standing and waiting with that damn twisted grin on his face.
Waiting, all of them, just waiting.
