Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,14

vampire dropped to the ground, screaming and clutching at his chest. The female vampire sped around the car toward me, but I’d spent years handling road flares, and I had the cap off and the igniter struck by the time she reached me. She couldn’t slow her momentum in time, so she wound up colliding with the flare, which burned my wrist a little. I’d been hoping to actually stab her with the thing, but I settled for setting her clothes and her long blonde braid on fire.

Howling with pain, she ran for the scrubby dirt on the other side of the bicycle path and dropped to the ground, trying to roll herself out. I had to drop the flare, but just as I did, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and saw the third vampire hurtling toward me. My would-be attacker was abruptly blindsided by Quinn, who burst through the car window like a missile, launching both of them into the darkness. The light wasn’t bright enough to make out their fight, but I heard scuffling and snarling. I ran for the discarded gun, picked it up, and snapped the magazine back in, whirling around to point it at the fight.

“It’s okay,” came Quinn’s voice out of the darkness. “He’s dead.”

I nodded, only then realizing it had gone quiet. I turned the weapon toward the female vampire, but there was nothing left but a skeleton-shaped fire. I relaxed my arm, lowering the sidearm.

Quinn’s form morphed out of the darkness. “Your wrist,” he said, reaching for me.

I realized I was rubbing it absently with my free hand. “Oh! It’s fine.” I let him look, but it was barely a first-degree burn. I’d put some salve on it and forget about it.

“Can you get the flashlight?” I asked Quinn. “Let’s talk to our survivor.”

We converged on the male vamp, who had gone still on the ground, both hands still clutching his chest like he could hold the bones together himself. It had to hurt like hell. Quinn snapped on the flashlight and held it high. The vampire blinked in the sudden light, looking at me with fear.

Good. He should be afraid.

Then I realized he was avoiding my eyes, his gaze darting from my forehead to my chest to Quinn, then back again in a frantic loop. He’d been warned not to look at me. Interesting. “What’s your name?” I asked him.

His lips moved, but only a wheezing hiss came out. “The stake must have punctured a lung, maybe both,” Quinn observed. “He needs air to talk.”

I sighed. “Do you still have baggies in the glove compartment?”

The next few minutes were fairly disgusting, as Quinn had to shove a plastic baggie into the vampire’s chest to cover the hole in the lung. I was all for sharing work, but I decided that in this case my best contribution would be holding the flashlight.

Quinn’s hands were still actually in the vamp’s chest, holding the baggie in position, when I asked again, “What’s your name?”

“Kraig,” he breathed, still avoiding my eyes. “With a K.”

I blinked. That’s what he wanted to use his breath on? “Who sent you after me, Kraig?”

Without moving his arm, he lifted a shaky finger and pointed it toward the back of the car. “Ford.”

Quinn and I exchanged a look. So the vampire who’d hung back in the shadows had been the head vampire in Denver. “Is he your dominus?”

“Yes. Yes.” His answers were coming fast, as if to show how cooperative he could be.

“How did you find us?”

“Followed the big Jeep,” he wheezed. “Figured you’d visit the bloodbags.”

Quinn shot him a disgusted look. Kraig was referring to human people. “Why did Ford want you to come after us?” I demanded.

“Don’t know.”

“What did he want with her?” Quinn asked, jerking his head toward me.

“Don’t know.”

I moved closer, crouching down next to him. The injured vampire still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You get a choice now, Kraig,” I said softly. “Do you want me to press you, so I can see if you’re lying, or would you rather we just killed you?”

He agreed to be pressed.

When he finally looked at me, I honed in my focus and called up a connection between us. As soon as I felt it lock into place, I asked him all the same questions again. Unfortunately, Kraig had been telling the truth about not knowing anything. Ford was his dominus—his lord, for lack of a better term—and Ford had said they were to