“What kind of cologne is that?” she asked softly. As soon as the words were spoken, she shook her head, as if she hadn’t known they were going to come out of her. As if she would have taken them back if she could.
“It’s not cologne,” he replied.
“What is it.”
“Me. When I’m around you.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think.”
The demand wasn’t a passive-aggressive move or a fishing expedition for sexual innuendo because he had no game—although the no-game was definitely true. In fact, he hoped that maybe she could sort his intentions out for him. Maybe there was something in his face, his eyes, his stance, that she could see or sense, a warning that he was going to hurt her . . . or an indication that she was safe with him.
He didn’t know the answer to that himself.
“I have to . . . go,” he mumbled.
“Where do you live?”
“North of town.”
“Alone?”
“No.”
“Who with?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
She laughed in a short rush. “You come out of nowhere, tell me how to kill you, help me evade the police, and then bring me here. Whereupon you’re the one who is leaving. You don’t think at least some portion of that is mysterious?”
“I want you to call me when you need me.”
As he recited his number, she interrupted him. “What is that, some kind of bat phone?”
“I have to go.”
“I know. You keep saying that. So go. You clearly don’t have to worry about the police, and something tells me you can handle all those weapons you’re wearing under that leather. So you’re free, free as a bird.”
“Call me when you—”
“Exactly what do you think I’m going to need you for.” She closed her eyes. “Actually, don’t answer that. I think I know, and PS, as pickup lines go, that is so not very original.”
Syn’s brain was telling his body to move. His body was ignoring the commands. And as he became trapped, she fell silent.
“You want some of this?” she murmured after a moment. “You keep staring at it like you didn’t have dinner.”
It took him a minute to figure out she was talking about the snack.
“I don’t know what that is,” he said.
“You’ve never had a Slim Jim?”
“No, but I wouldn’t mind trying one.”
And that was when he kissed her.
Back in the alley where the lesser had been consumed, Mr. F stumbled from the deep doorway he had hidden in. When he’d sensed the other slayer, he’d come as fast as he could. He needed to talk to someone, anyone, about what the fuck was going on, and for some reason, he had a beacon that helped him track and identify others like himself. If he could only get with one of the previous inductees, surely they had to know more about the ins and outs of his nightmare—the outs being what he was really concerned with.
’Cuz this shit was a bad trip without the LSD.
As he’d closed in on his comrade, or whatever the fuck you wanted to call the other guy, he’d had to stop and take cover. A vampire attacked the lesser Mr. F had been after, and he’d braced himself for what he somehow knew was going to happen—in the same way he’d known how to get into that house in that neighborhood.
Except instead of stabbing the undead back to the maker, something else happened.
An inhalation.
The vampire had gone mouth-to-mouth without the resuscitation, taking the essence of the Omega into himself, drawing the evil into his body. Afterward, he had collapsed. That was when the second vampire had showed up and there had been some kind of a light show. But there was no time to think through any part of it. The goateed member of the species, the one in the savior role, looked right down the alley at Mr. F, and that meant it was time to fucking go. Mr. F had learned long ago on the streets not to engage with something stronger than himself if he could avoid the conflict—
Between one blink and the next, Mr. F’s eyesight went on the fritz. Everything in front of him became wavy and indistinct, a vague sense of vertigo making him lurch on his feet. Where were the two vampires?
Fuck that. Where was the alley?
Keeping his gun out, he took off running, and it was a relief to find that as he beat feet in the opposite direction, everything he raced past became visually clear: the buildings on either side of the alley. The