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“You and the traitor—you’ll both die, screaming.”
“Uh, wait, let me guess.” A pause as she held up her hand. “Begging for death? For mercy?” A hard shake of her head. “Not my style. Didn’t do it the first time. Won’t be doing it the second.”
Bright red lights filtered through the smoke. The loud blare of a fire truck’s horn had Leo jerking. “It’s not over.”
“For you, it is.”
Simon’s knees hit the dirt. “Dee…” Too much pain. Too much. Mateo’s claws had dug too deeply into his chest. He glanced down now, finally, and—bastard almost took my heart.
This wasn’t good. “D-Dee…” He tried to call her again.
But Dee, with her slightly scorched hair, leapt forward and slammed her fist into Leo’s face.
Then Simon slammed face first into the ground.
Chapter Ten
He woke on a gurney. A mask covered half of his face, and some crazy woman had her hand pressed hard to his heart. Simon’s hands jerked, snapping through the binds that held his wrists in place.
“Wow, easy!” That hand pressed harder. The woman stared at him, her hazel eyes steady. “You go jumping up, and you’ll ruin all my fine work.”
He heaved up anyway and winced at the pull of—stitches? Yes, she’d sewn up his chest.
“I didn’t do anything for the burns.” No, he didn’t want to look at those, but the woman, an EMT, trailed her fingers down his arm.
Pain pulsed through him, and Simon sucked in a hard breath.
“Easy.” She glanced over her shoulder at the swarming cops and the firefighters with their blasting hoses. Then her eyes came back to him. “I stitched you up to stop the blood loss. I figured the burns would heal either before or on your next rising.”
Rising. A vampire term. So the lady with the curly brown hair knew what he was.
“I gave you blood,” she said, leaning in close and pointing to a bag that dangled near his head. “It took four bags to wake you up.”
“You mind giving him some room, Samuels?” Dee’s annoyed voice.
Simon almost smiled. Almost.
The EMT did.
“Jeez, I swear, if I didn’t know you were screwing that charmer, I’d think you were hitting on my vamp,” Dee groused.
Her vamp? Since when?
He viewed the jealousy as some serious progress.
Samuels eased back, and Simon got a good look at his Born.
Soot marked the right side of her face. The ends of her hair had been scorched, so the cut was even more screwed than normal. Her lips were red. Her eyes big and dark. And when those eyes landed on him, horror filled them.
“Oh, hell, Simon, I didn’t know it was this bad.” She jumped into the back of the ambulance and hurried to his side. “What the hell were you thinking? Vamps can’t jump through fire. You know the skin of a vamp burns too fast.”
A weakness. One of only a few his kind possessed.
Her breath came out in a long hiss. Her fingers hovered over the red, raw flesh.
He took her hand. “Don’t look at it.”
Her gaze rose. “Your face…”
