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The king looked at him blandly. “And now you know how serious I am. But no one elseneedstodie.”
“Wonderful,” Marco said. “We’re duly informed of your seriousness. How about you get on with the actual reason you’rehere?”
“This is entirely your fault,” the vampire king said in a haughty tone. “We all know the space for the supernatural kind in the modern world is dwindling. We vampires have learned how to adapt, how to blend in among the humans so that they don’t discover us. But you shifters.” A sneer crept into his voice. “Like the animals you transform into, you let your baser instincts overcome common sense. You run around without control. You can’t stick to a humanform.”
“We take care of any troubles caused by our own kind,” Aaronsaid.
“Not well enough. You can’t even control your own kind enough to stop them from turning against you. I’ve heard all about the chaos of your community from shifters who’ve already attacked you more than once and gotten away.” He let out a faint huff. “You’re careless, and eventually you’re going to be found out. And then the humans will be on the hunt for the rest of us too. None of us is safe while you continue giving into those animalimpulses.”
“We need to shift just like you need to drink blood,” West said tightly. “You don’t see us trying to stop you fromeating.”
“We don’t need to run around in the open with our fangs out to eat,” the king retorted. He slapped his hands together. “From my view, it would be better if we were rid of all of you. But I’m willing to consider an alternative. We have identified a few isolated areas of the country humans find so unpleasant they rarely travel there. You will stay there, and never cross those boundaries—and then you maylive.”
Did he really think we’d agree to that? Move the entire shifter community to some inhospitable zones—and what, with the vampires guarding us like refugee camps, making sure we never ventured out? I bared myteeth.
“You have to know that’s a completely unreasonable suggestion,” Aaronsaid.
Marco chuckled dryly. “We’re not going to uproot all of our kin just so you can indulge your paranoia. What else have you got? We might be willing to work with you—if you’re actually workingwithus and not just trying to herd us into apen.”
The king’s posture shifted. I felt it from him then, before he’d even opened his mouth—he’d been playing the part of negotiating, but he’d never really expected us to accept. And he’d just checked out of the discussioncompletely.
Checked out to give himself over to the other purpose of thismeeting.
A roar of warning broke from my throat just as a flood of vampires burst from the backs of thetrucks.
Chapter 5
Ren
Fire rushedup my throat after my roar. I’d have fried the vampire king into cinders just like that if he hadn’t moved so fast. The boss bloodsucker leapt into the shadows around the old gas pumps and vanished. Apparently the vamps couldn’t just blend into the darkness—they could disappear right into ittoo.
I didn’t have time to figure out if I could chase him through the shadows. Dozens of vampire soldiers were charging forward to take his place, swinging the guns they must have had stashed in the trucks to aim at me and myalphas.
Fuck that. I spewed out the flames crackling at the back of my mouth with a sharp heave of breath. My dragon fire washed over the bloodsuckers in a wave. Every vampire body it touched burst intocinders.
Several shots rattled out over the hiss of the flames. A bullet caught my shoulder with a tiny burst of pain. Not enough to slow me down. With a whip of my head and a fresh spurt of fire, those guns turned into so much misshapengarbage.
I sprang forward into the heap of ashen dust I’d created, readying for another blast. A bunch of the vampires had gotten smart, racing for the tree line at the edge of the lot. My next outpouring of fire caught the stragglers, but more than I liked escaped into the shelter of the trees where I’d have to take them down one byone.
Shots rang out and snarls carried from the forest. The shifters who’d come as our defenders must be circling around the lot to hold off the vampireattackers.
“Into the cars!” Nate was shouting. “The parlay isdone.”
West’s voice, harsh with anger, broke through the bear shifter’s. “Everyone, let’s get out of here,now. Do not engage unless you haveto.”
The vampires who’d walked to meet us with their king unarmed had run for their own trucks. To grab more guns, I’d bet. They could forget that—and forget driving the trucks as well. I wasn’t letting them give chase once we got on theroad.
I rained fire down on the fronts of the vehicles, melting the metal hoods and the engine workings underneath into twisted blobs. The windshields shattered with the heat. A few of the vampires around back ducked from behind the cargo areas, guns in hand. I leapt higher into the air, summoning another stream offire.
I didn’t catch one of them in time. The automatic gun thundered, its spray of bullets searing across my hind legs and thigh. I shrieked more in rage than pain and pelted the vamp with flames. In an instant, he and his gun were a moltenlump.
More gunfire was still going off amid the trees. Ignoring the stinging ache radiating through my legs, I took off toward the forest. Some of the shifters were dashing to our cars, but others were still wrestling with the vampires, trying to cover their kin’sescape.
A black wolf slashed open one vamp’s neck, and the bloodsucker crumpled into a healing stasis. Two foxes, a red one and a tawny one with huge ears I guessed was Felix, sank their teeth into another vampire’s legs at the same time and yanked. The vamp tumbled, and Felix was at his throat a secondlater.
The trees made it harder for the vamps to get a clear shot with their guns, but that didn’t stop them from using their weapons. Bullets thunked into tree trunks and bark sprayed. A coyote stumbled and fell as the hail of bullets caught it across the chest. Marco’s lion lieutenant, who’d joined us for the parlay, sprang at a bloodsucker and bashed the woman’s head into a jutting root. Before he could wheel, another vamp had leapt from behind a tree and startedshooting.
Blood burst from wounds down Leonard’s side. I caught the vamp with a spurt of fire. A couple of canine shifters ran to grab the lion shifter as he crumpled, transforming back into human form. They hefted their injured ally up to carry him to the waitingcars.
