As if he had any real right to be.
“Safer than I was, at least. Safe enough that you’re staying where you are.”
“Yes, but you really have to considerwhyI’m staying here.”
“The thing I have in my hand, obviously.”
“Yes, well, about that,” he said in so pointed a way she knew what he was going to do, before he finished the rest. She even braced, as he spoke the words: “It was never a deity we don’t believe in that repels us.”
Then sure enough—he went for her. He practically lunged, and so violently she almost jerked back. She had a split second of fear, thinking she had gotten it as badly wrong as he assumed. But just as she went to, it happened. The thing she’d planned for, the trick she’d set up.
It worked.
He got to the point of actually getting past the doorframe, and his whole body seemed to just slap to a stop. More than that, really, worse than that—it was as if he’d rammed into something.Like a bird against glass, her mind gasped, as she watched his thighs seem to flatten, and his arm bang off absolutely nothing at all, and his head snap all the way back, so violently it was as if he’d been punched.
When he righted it again, his nose was bleeding.
It was bleeding, and it wascrooked.
The impact hadbrokenit.
Holy fuck, she almost whispered. “I know,” she said, as he touched his nose and then looked at the blood on his hand,stunned. “It was never articles of faith that stopped a vampire. It was thematerial they made the articles of faith out of.”
And on the last word, she tossed away the pencils and string. Her cobbled-together little thing that she had only pretended to believe in. Because now it was clear that she had gambled on something else entirely—and she had won.
But even better:
He knew it.
He looked at where that barrier was wonderingly.
Then he looked at her, with something that wasn’t withering disdain anymore. “You rubbed fucking iron filings into your doorframe,” he said, and for the first time since she’d met him, she let herself grin.
“Oh, youbetI did, motherfucker.”
“ButHollister’s Guidedoesn’t even mention it.”
“The most popular text is notoriously not often the best.”
“So you dug up what? Some obscure witch’s account of warding off vampires?”
She spread her hands, as smug about it as he had been from second one. “She seemed to know what she was talking about. Though even if she hadn’t, I would have erred on the side of caution. Better to collate evidence from several sources than rely on just one,” she said, as if that was just so obvious.
And it maddened him as much as she had hoped it would.
“So I have a broken nose because you’re a conscientious bookworm.”
“You have a broken nose because you just tried to kill me, Harker.”
“I told you. I’m not trying to kill you. That was just me proving a point.”
“By lunging at me, fangs bared?”
“Don’t be dramatic, my fangs weren’t bared,” he said and rolled his eyes. Then he paused, before adding almost casually: “Thisis baring.” And god, she couldn’t help the sound of shock that came out of her when he followed through. He snarled, hard enough that it seemed to change his whole face. Creases appeared where they shouldn’t be; things shifted in ways that looked unnatural.
And thoseteeth.
It wasn’t just two neat little incisors.
