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Blaise flashed his fangs. “She’s mine. This is not your business.”
The atrium went as silent as a cemetery at midnight. The nearest humans backed away.
Zaq held up his hands, palms out. “Chill. Out.” His voice was don’t-mess-with-me mean. “Let her go. Find yourself another thrall.”
Blaise shoved him out of the way and hustled me toward the escalator.
“Help me,” I mouthed at Zaq over my shoulder.
He started after us, but Étan cut in front of him, preventing him from following too quickly. “Pardon, m’sieur,” he muttered.
Blaise and I reached the escalator. I shot Zaq a panicky look.
Zaq pushed past Étan and kept coming.
Satisfied, I faced forward. Everything was going as planned.
The escalator was too crowded for Zaq to catch up with us before we reached the ground floor. Blaise and I ducked into a side hall where the security cams had been disabled. A couple of security guards had been paid a fortune to wait five minutes before investigating.
Outside, another Paris soldier waited in an anonymous white van.
I palmed a syringe of a fast-acting tranquilizer. We’d have to move quickly. The dose would knock out a human for half a day, but a dhampir like Zaq would shake off the effects in fifteen minutes, maybe even ten. I wanted to spend as little time as possible in the van with an awake and pissed-off Zaq.
Zaq caught up with us near the exit. He grabbed Blaise’s arm and jerked him away from me. “I said, ‘Let her go.’”
I whipped around Blaise and jabbed the syringe into Zaq’s upper arm.
“What the—?” His gaze locked with mine.
Time stopped. I’d known his eyes were green, but their intensity stunned me, rendered me immobile—a bright, leaf-green touched with gold, like a jaguar I’d once stumbled upon in a South American rainforest.
For an endless moment, I stared into them, captured as surely as if he’d laid hands on me.
Étan appeared and time restarted. I stepped back, giving Étan room. With superhuman speed, he dragged Zaq’s hands behind his back and secured them with zip-tie handcuffs.
Zaq lashed out with his foot, catching Blaise in the thigh. Blaise swore and slammed a big fist into Zaq’s solar plexus.
Zaq’s breath whooshed out. He bent over, sucking in oxygen—and spun around, still bent at the waist, and kicked out at Étan, a heel shot to the shin.
Étan hissed. “Enculé.” Motherfucker.
Damn. Had I miscalculated the dose?
I moved forward to help, even though I kind of enjoyed seeing two vampires get their asses kicked by a man with his hands bound behind his back.
Zaq’s eyes rolled up in his head. He slumped forward into my arms.
I got a noseful of his scent.
Dark, male, and somehow right.
I gulped and shoved him at Étan. Blaise opened the door and Étan dragged Zaq outside. The Paris soldier stood next to the van, its back door open. He tossed the keys to Blaise and went inside the terminal. He’d clean up any loose ends, including retrieving my and Zaq’s backpacks, then return to Paris by train.
Étan heaved Zaq into the van. Zaq’s head bounced off the metal floor. He lay where he’d fallen in an awkward heap.
I jumped into the van after him.
Étan grabbed the door handle and eyed Zaq. “You sure you can handle him?”
