roaring at him to pull the truck over and kiss her now.
“Not in words,” he said quietly, forcing his eyes to glance back to the road every now and then as he grew more distracted by the redheaded beauty in his passenger seat.
“How then?”
“More like…ideas.”
Claire shook her head. “Can you give me an example? I don’t understand.”
“Last night,” he said. “When I, um, had you against the wall?”
“That was your dragon’s idea?” she asked. “Not yours?”
“Sort of,” he said, realizing that he didn’t want her to think it wasn’t his idea either. “The desire was…well, anyway, that doesn’t matter. But that was what my dragon wanted to do, and it managed to exert its ideas over me in that moment, when my mental control slipped. But I had known for several minutes before that it wanted that.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice.
Good job, Pietro. Brilliant example to use. Making her think your dragon is the only one who wants her and that you can’t control it. That’s surely the way to win her over.
“Anyway,” he said, trying desperately to move on without making things more awkward than he already had. “That’s kind of how it works. It’s very…limited, in how it can communicate, but we live with one another. You sort of get used to the animal side of it.”
“Right, so does that mean that—”
Claire never got to finish her question, because at that exact moment Pietro’s door exploded inward under a thunderous impact that shattered glass and hurled the truck up and onto its side, sending it skidding over the asphalt, metal screeching loudly as sparks flew.
Before the truck had even come to a halt, Pietro had ripped his seatbelt free and was hammering on the front windshield, knocking it free.
“Stay here,” he growled, turning to look up and over at Claire as she stopped screaming. “You’re safer in here until this is done with. I’ll be right—”
Something powerful wrapped around his neck and hauled Pietro from the truck, bashing his head off the top of the cab as he went, opening a gash that started blood flowing down the back of his neck.
Unfazed, Pietro reached up over his head to grab what he realized was a human-sized wrist and squeezed.
A very inhuman scream tortured his eardrums, but the pressure on the back of his neck vanished. Pietro stumbled slightly, surprised at how much of his weight had been supported by the hand, and spun to face his attacker, already lashing out with a leg.
There was no doubt in his mind who it was—one of the vampires had tracked Claire down and now was trying to finish the job.
“Not on my watch,” he grunted as his foot made contact, and the vampire was flung back through the air and through a wooden fence, into someone’s backyard. “Much better.”
He started after the creature, intending to finally kill it, when a noise from where the truck was resting on its side reached him.
“Pietro!” Claire shrieked as a second vampire clambered up top and ripped the door off.
He charged to the rescue, casually batting the door aside with an arm as it came flying in at him courtesy of the second vampire.
“I don’t think so,” he snarled, launching himself in a flying tackle at the vampire as Claire kicked and flailed as best she could while suspended mid-air by nothing more than a seatbelt.
The flying leap took the vampire in the midsection, and they went down in a heap on the far side of the truck. Pietro landed on top, giving himself the first good glimpse of the creatures that he’d had since they had come through the portal.
To his shock, their skin was no longer the glossy midnight black of a beetle’s shell. It was now a much lighter shade of gray and was losing much of the shine. To his eyes, it was like it was becoming—
“Human,” he hissed in surprise. Pietro hadn’t known vampires could do that.
Does anybody?
The creature used his shock at its changed appearance to writhe and slip free of his grip. Without a word, it went straight for the car, like a mindless beast with thoughts of one thing, and one thing only.
Pietro’s hand closed around its ankle, stopping the creature cold. It hissed and swiped at him, fingernails elongating into razor sharp nails that dug furrows in his skin, blood welling up easily after.
The sight of the red life liquid sent the vampire into a frenzy. It launched itself at Pietro, mouth seeking the