who was standing slumped and vacant-eyed in the circle of her mother’s arms while her mother shouted for help and her father, looking terrified, took a protective stand in front of them.
“...scared, are ya, boyo?” Cooper was taunting the father. “That’s all right, then. I like scared, me.” He made a rude, deliberate slurping noise, his features contorting in ecstasy. “Yum, yum!” The tourist dad’s face turned slack and blank. “That’s right, let good old Cooper take care of you, make all your fears go away. Though there’s nothing quite as tasty as the terror of a sweet little bird like your daughter, innit?”
“For the love of God, leave us alone!” the mother cried in a shrill voice, wrapping her arms tighter around her daughter.
“Don’t you worry yourself, Ma,” Cooper replied jauntily. “God’s got nothing in the world to do with it. But I promise, it won’t hurt a bit.”
“Cooper!” Stefan said sharply. “Stand down!”
“Big man.” Cooper turned. There was a note of scorn in his voice. His pupils were fully dilated, swallowing all traces of his blue irises, and his eyes shone like dark moons in his narrow face. “Always trying to make us into summat we’re not. When are you going to learn? We’re not heroes, not the likes of us. We’re Outcast.”
Stefan locked gazes with him. “Nonetheless.”
“The lass was out of her head with terror, boss,” Cooper said, looking away with an effort. Reaching past the unresisting father, he chucked the teenaged girl under her chin. “Look at her now! Meek as a lamb.”
The mother screwed her eyes shut tight, shutting out the world. “Will somebody please do something?”
Cooper turned the black pits of his gaze back toward Stefan. “You heard her, big man. Do something. Why don’t you do the lady a kindness and take away her fear?”
Stefan hesitated.
He wanted it. I could sense that void of yearning opening, the emptiness longing to be filled, the beast straining to slip its leash. He glanced sideways at me, pupils zooming to leave an icy blue rim around the edges.
Cooper followed his gaze. “Oh, but it’s her you want, innit, boss?” He leered at me and licked his lips. “Can’t say as I blame you.”
“Goddammit, Cooper!” For the second time that night, a wave of fury rose in me—fury mixed with helplessness. This time it made my shield blaze, and I found I’d drawn dauda-dagr without thinking. Light danced along the runes etched on its length, along its razor-sharp edges. My eyes stung with tears, my hand trembling. “I thought we were friends. Don’t make me threaten you!”
“The angel of feckin’ death.” Something stark and bleak surfaced behind Cooper’s black, black eyes. “You know there’s a part of me that wants you to do it, don’t you, sweet Daisy?”
“I don’t—”
Stefan threw a punch, a solid roundhouse that connected with Cooper’s jaw just below his ear and sent him sagging to the pavement.
I let out a sigh of relief.
“Do you need a hand here, Daisy?” Cody said behind me. His tone was terse, and although he’d addressed me, I had a feeling it was meant for Stefan.
So did Stefan, since he replied for both of us. “The situation is under control, Officer Fairfax,” he said, pulling a cell phone from the pocket of his black leather vest and sending a quick text. “I kept a number of my men in reserve in case it should be necessary to perform an extraction.”
Cody’s nostrils flared, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Such foresight.”
Stefan’s tone remained courteous, but his pupils glittered. “I do my best.”
The alpha male standoff might have gone on a while longer if the poor terrified tourist mom hadn’t interrupted it.
“Officer, please, help us!” she said frantically to Cody. “Look at them! Look at my daughter and my husband! What did that creature do to them?”
“He fed on their emotions, ma’am. Too deeply.” Cody examined the father and daughter, making sure there were no head injuries to account for their condition. They endured it without complaint, standing like slack-jawed mannequins. He glanced at Stefan, his lip curling. “Tell me they’re going to be all right, Ludovic.”
“They will recover,” Stefan said quietly. “It will take some days. A week, perhaps. But they will recover.”
“They’d better,” Cody said.
“They will.”
A trio of Outcast arrived on motorcycles, wending their way past the police barricades. Two of them grabbed the still-unconscious Cooper under the arms and slung him into a sidecar. Cooper stirred and murmured a little, eyelids fluttering, looking almost as young and