caught me. My vision was already starting to go hazy, but I could see the man who’d shot me. He had blond hair and a chiseled jaw. He wore the outer garments all vampires wore, covering his skin from the sun. He lifted me easily. “Hey, and Romeo here has some serious mental powers. So he’s some kind of hybrid. I can feel him batting against my shielding. Dude, that’s rude. Yeah, he wants me to cut off my own dick. Fuck you, Adam. Get the transport ready and let’s not underestimate this guy. He’s strong and has a refined sense of revenge. Buddy, I’m not trying to steal your consort. I have one of my own, and she really would cut off my dick. I’ll bring you in with her. Summer of the Fae Lands, known to all as the Destroyer, I’m arresting you for…it’s a lot and you won’t remember. Let’s get going. Hey, weird vamp, if you could get Adam to cut his hair I would appreciate it. He’s got this thing where he thinks he’ll get a consort if he looks like a supermodel or something.”
“Whoa, you weren’t kidding,” another voice said, though it sounded further away. “He’s trying to get me to shoot you. He doesn’t know I would do that for fun if I could get away with it. Thank the gods for shielding tech. He is strong. He’s got two full doses in him. Are you sure we should bring him along?”
“Yeah, I think it’s better we keep an eye on him. Let’s make it a party. Time to head home and collect that bounty.”
“Why do you get to carry the pretty consort, Tag? I’m always left with the dudes,” the man named Adam said.
I could barely make out the second man picking up Marcus as Tag settled onto his hoverbike.
“Because it’s good to be the boss,” Tag said. “Also, I actually think this chick is way more dangerous than he is. After all, she’s destroyed whole planes. Let’s get going. Charlie’s waiting.”
I felt myself moving right before the whole world went dark.
* * * *
Kelsey
I stared down at the book that had Dean up in arms. It looked more like an empty ornate sketch pad to me. “What’s supposed to be there?”
Dean’s skin had gone as white as his hair. He looked younger than he had before, but then pure terror that an authority figure was going to kick a little ass could do that to a kid. “Prophecy. Specifically prophecy about me saving my home plane. We’ve been looking for it for years and this was the only way to read the source material.”
“Your home plane is the Earth plane.” Quinn stood beside me and he was suddenly deeply interested in the discussion. He was in full-on ambassador mode.
Dean nodded. “Yes.”
I wasn’t sure how much of this I wanted Quinn to hear, but I had some questions. Dean and Summer had talked about how the witches magically transcribed all their prophecies into a single book. That would be handy, and I would definitely be talking to Liv about a spell to do that. I often had to grab whatever was around and write as fast as my hands could to get Gray’s down. I’d once handed the academics a prophecy about a town in South America getting its ass kicked by a giant spider demon that I’d had to scribble on the back of my grocery list. Hugo and Henri now know I need super-absorbent tampons. Also, that I can’t spell. “So you’re looking for the original prophecy because you can’t remember everything she said.”
“I was only thirteen at the time,” Dean admitted. “I wasn’t great at getting the details.”
“I can certainly see where it would be better to have the original prophecy. We study some of ours for years and still don’t understand them, and we have access to our prophets. Have you seen other psychics? Sometimes they can tap into memories that aren’t on the surface. A good psychic might be able to draw the memory out.” Quinn seemed to think about the problem for a moment. “If this is about the Earth plane, my partner and I need to understand what’s going on. My partner, Summer’s father, he’s the King of all Vampire. He also sits at the head of the Council of Supernatural Beings. I’ve read much prophecy and never once heard your name.”
I needed to move us off this subject. The last thing I needed was