of distant. But the copper perfume made his fangs drop down and his mouth salivate. Both of which were sure signs he had not fed in way too long—especially as the plasma that had gotten his attention was human in derivation, not vampire, and usually that watered-down stuff failed to interest him.
Lifting his chin, he sniffed at the air. Very fresh. Like . . . really fucking fresh.
Whistling loud through his front teeth, he waited for his comrade to respond—and the Bastard didn’t waste time. Balthazar threw a vicious right hook that sent his slayer careening into a dumpster, and then he looked over.
Syn tapped his nose and then pointed farther down the alley.
Balthazar nodded once and got back in his fight, jumping on his lesser, grabbing the back of its hair and playing Hopper Ball with its face and the side of a brick building, bangada-bangada-bangada—
Jesus, that black splatter stain was an urban Rorschach test if Syn had ever seen one.
Turning away, he knew that Balthazar had things well in hand, and if there were any slayer backups that rode up on the scene? Then Syn wasn’t going to be far at all.
Following the scent, he went farther into the alley, and some three hundred yards later, he found bloody footprints in the snow—and two other pairs of tracks with them. And just as he was starting to follow the road show, he heard a male voice farther down, the deep tones ricocheting around like whoever it was was at a dead end.
Something was flashing, something pale, in the shadows far ahead.
Syn fell into a jog, and when he entered the darkest part of the alley, his eyes adjusted quick: A woman was running for her life in the snow, some portion of her clothes hanging off her, blood streaming down her legs, her movements uncoordinated as if she were in great pain or had been drugged. Closing the distance, a man stalked after her, his slow, even steps a metronome of death that was imminent—
A third figure appeared without warning, a great dark shape materializing from out of thin air directly between the man and the woman.
Like only a vampire can.
Syn recognized the black leather jacket and the stance instantly. The face took a second longer to come online.
Well, what do you know. He’d found the missing trainee. And Boone was a mountain of muscle blocking the path of the man, protecting the injured woman.
Gallant move, even if the victim was a human. Too bad the Good Samaritan routine broke a shit ton of the Brotherhood’s rules, starting with the Do Not Get Involved in Business That Is Not Ours. Which was pretty much the first no-no on the list.
Fortunately for the kid, however, his kind of freethinking was, along with his location and the load of shit he was no doubt about to throw down, not a problem Syn was looking to solve.
At the end of the night, who was he to rain on a parade like this?
As Boone reassumed his corporeal form between the man and the woman, his sudden appearance caused a big reaction on both their parts: The victim behind him screamed and her assailant with that knife in his hand jumped back and fell right on his ass.
And a partridge in a pear tree, to go with the winter theme of the alley.
Boone glanced over his shoulder at the woman. “Close your eyes.” Her pale face was bruised badly, her hair matted with blood. She wasn’t shivering in the cold temperatures, either, which was not a good sign.
“Sweetheart,” he said softly, “put your hands over your eyes. I’ll tell you when you can look again. Trust me. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, but you do not need to see this.”
Her chest was heaving, her stare peeled wide. But something about him got through to her. Nodding in a series of head jerks, she lifted her blood-soaked hands to her face and caved in on herself, squatting down and ducking into a tight ball.
Like maybe she was used to protecting herself from blows.
Boone refocused on the man and bared his fangs.
Her assailant was pushing his heels into the snowpack as he tried to crab-walk backward, that knife in his hand hindering his process. Gone was the manly bluster, the aggression, the all-powerful sense of I-gotcha.
He’d even wet his fucking pants.
As Boone walked toward the man, he knew which weapon he was going to use to kill the guy.