and risk making Vincent angry, or you let us go and no one gets hurt.”
The werewolf chewed the corner of his lips. “It’s a tough decision.”
Hands almost too sweaty, I felt Jason push past my arm, taking one step towards danger.
Don’t!
“You can see, the only true option is to let us go,” he said in that same, maddeningly calm voice. Did he not see the danger we stood upon, its knife-thin edge? “Live and let live. Is this not your motto?”
My arm wavered dangerously and I saw the flicker in the werewolf’s eye.
He was going to do it!
“Jason!” I screamed.
Marcus leaped towards Jason, his dark eyes filled with a bloodlust, a bloodlust that would splatter my Master’s blood across the shiny chrome casino machines.
Jason surged forward to meet his attack, mouth open wide in a wordless, soundless battle cry, arms open as if he meant to meet his death in a close embrace.
Would this mean his death?
That I could not accept.
The dagger wasn’t nearly as long to cause grievous damage to the alpha, but if I could just get his attention, get his attention long enough to get Jason out of the casino, then I would use it.
Besides, it was better than fighting a werewolf with my bare hands.
Fully aware of the risks at hand, I crossed in front of Jason and let his momentum into my back catapult me into Marcus’s flailing hands, his nails already lengthening into truly awesome proportions.
I ducked, feeling the the wind from his left hand disturb my hair.
Shifting my grip on the bi-su, I brought my arm up, and slashed him across the eyes, feeling the delicious friction of the blade biting into skin and then into...other.
It was not a deep cut.
But as far as wounds went, it was a debilitating one.
The werewolf roared and reared back. In my haste to back away, I caught a glancing blow on my shoulder and that single blow sent me careening into the side of a slot machine, the metal bashing into my left side.
Lights exploded across my vision and I forgot how to breath, literally.
And then my Master attacked.
12
It wasn’t as though I had never seen him fight before.
Indeed, I had been a witness to his sparring sessions with his Domina, and I knew the damage he could elicit on a being not vampiric in nature.
In truth, I was apprehensive. For one so young, did he have the power to take upon an alpha wolf, a man who had clearly clawed and bit his way to the top of dead bodies?
But in a split second, I knew all my worries to be for nothing.
This...this being in front of me...
He was power.
He was strength.
He was invincible.
With a single blow, Marcus was bowled upon on his back and when Jason almost casually placed a hand on his neck, he ceased to move.
If one had blinked at the wrong time, they would have missed the whole thing.
But I did not blink.
I saw everything.
Marcus’s chest moved up and down at a frenetic pace and his hands twitched uselessly at his side. And despite the mess I had made of his eyes, he did not keen in pain, did not even refer to it. I stared at the blood running down the side of his face and felt nothing. Would he ever see again? I did not know.
“What the hell are you?” he asked.
Jason’s hand tightened and the werewolf let out a small, strangled sound. “Oh, dear. Do forgive me, won’t you? I don’t know my strength quite yet. Although, this seems small compared to what she has done to you.”
The wolf coughed, a wet sick noise, as he drew in another breath. “Once again, I ask you, what the hell are you?”
The smile did not reach my Master’s dark eyes. “Me? I’m just a vampire, remember? A vampire who will now take his leave, along with his human companion.”
A human companion.
I was his human companion.
Upon retrospect, it supposed it was easier to call me that rather than servant or bodyguard.
Although, now I felt rather moot. “Jason.”
His gaze never left that of the wolf. “Yes.”
“We need to go.”
“Understood.”
Jason straightened up, and stepped away from the shivering alpha, wiping a hand on his jeans as though he couldn’t bear to get the touch off his hands. “He seemed easy enough to bring down.”
Two bodyguards, motionless until now, sprang into action, putting an arm under each shoulder and bringing Marcus up to his unsteady feet.
The wolf laughed softly and then coughed again, a