Page 71

Victor caught my arm, and hauled me away. “The door! Go!”

The vampires who had entered the chapel were down, but some were trying to rise. And more would come.

It was definitely time to leave.

“Zee?”

“He’ll be fine,” Victor said. “He’s Lycian. He was born ready, remember?” His quick smile eased the ache in my chest.

We’d almost made it to the door when another vampire plunged through the roof. Victor spun, ripping the attacker out of the air and flinging him over the pews. “Go! Get them to safety!”

I bolted out of the chapel, and found Zee staggering toward the small group of huddled Lost Ones. He gave me two thumbs up, even as he limped along.

“Stick close,” I told them, and plunged into the brush, heading back toward the track we’d arrived from.

We hadn’t gone far when a vampire shot out of the trees. Zee’s right hook knocked him flat on his back, and with a brutal stab in the throat from Shareen, the vampire flailed and choked.

Then Zee took his head too. “Killing suckers like a fucking boss.”

Victor blurred up behind us a few minutes later, almost getting Zee’s fist to the face. They gave each other a conciliatory nod, and we all marched on.

Killing the queen had definitely not been the plan. And now, here we were, leading the Lost Ones out of the dark . . .

Almost as though we were in some kind of . . . prophecy.

CHAPTER 17

Nobody said much after we’d all clambered into the back of the minivan. What was there to say? The weather’s warm for this time of year, and oops, we just decapitated the vampire queen?

The vampires wouldn’t mind, right?

She’d probably been a horrible person anyway.

In the back, seated among the Lost Ones we’d rescued, I rubbed the ache in my neck. The bite had healed but drying blood painted my side. Behind the wheel, Zee complained about breaking a nail and was covered in scratches from his sideways flight through the chapel roof. And Victor looked as though he’d been wrestling with a bear, and had lost half his shirt in the process.

A bunch of wide-eyed, traumatized people and three little pixies kept looking at me, as though maybe I should say something?

“So, uhm . . .” I croaked. “You can stay at our hotel, get cleaned up, and have something to eat if you like?” I told them. They glanced at each other. How much had they seen? Did they suspect I wasn’t as cute and innocent as I appeared? Had they seen too much? And if they had, what was I going to do? Unalive them all after rescuing them? That would make me worse than the vampires.

Kenzo sat with them, still naked under Victor’s jacket. “What happened to the other people in the manhunt?”

“They’re safe,” Victor replied from the front. “I dealt with the vampires participating in the hunt accordingly. The SSD has been informed, after receiving an anonymous call.”

Kenzo nodded and looked around, as though waiting for someone else to ask the big questions. When nobody did, he plowed on. “Are you guys like the Scooby gang?”

“Wait, what’s a scooby?” I asked.

“Plucky queers who go around in their gang-bang wagon solving crimes?”

“Sounds fun,” Zee said. “We should do that.”

“You know, like superheroes?” Kenzo elaborated.

A tiny laugh squeaked from me. “What?! Us? We just happened to be passing by and picked you up on the side of the road, remember? Just passing through. Had nothing to do with whatever happened back there.” They looked to each other. “Nothing at all.”

“Yeah, but . . . you saved us,” Kenzo said. “You broke their chains, the demon chopped off the queen’s head, and Daddy Fancy Pants killed like . . . loads of vampires.”

“That’s really not my name,” Victor said.