She threw Noa a glower and turned left down the nearly empty street. The club was in Old Town, as was her apartment above the bakery. It was only a ten-minute walk north in the upper area of Old Town, yet as Rose left the club behind, she felt a crawling sensation down the back of her neck and spine again.
Shit.
She flicked a wary look over her shoulder but saw no one.
Heart racing, stomach roiling, she picked up her pace.
As Rose passed the familiar stores in the eerie stillness of the early morning, relief began to build. She was closing in on her apartment. She was almost there. When she got back to her apartment, she would give herself a good talking-to for letting the weird interaction with those siblings get to her. They’d made her jumpy for sure.
And that’s when it happened.
He came out of nowhere.
No footsteps at her back to warn her.
Strong arms, like metal vises, bound around her, and then the world blurred into dark. Burning pain scored down her shoulder from her neck, and she gasped. Confusion had slowed her but the pain sharpened her focus.
She was in an alley.
Pinned against the brick wall of a building. It smelled of trash and urine.
A man’s head buried against her neck. Her arms caged against the wall by his hands.
Rose pushed against him as the gnawing sensation on her neck grew unbearable—
He lifted his head in a gasp and moonlight revealed him.
The man from the club tonight who had been staring at her.
Hunting her.
His eyes reflected pure, unnatural silver in the moonlight.
Blood smeared his chin and coated his fangs.
Fangs.
Disbelief and horror paralyzed Rose.
No …
He couldn’t be …
There was no such fucking thing.
He stared at her in wonder. “What are you?” he hissed through blood-soaked, long incisors.
Rose felt the blood pumping out of her body and knew he’d hit an artery. She didn’t have much time. If any.
She could stand there, disbelieving, refusing to accept the utter weirdness of the world and her eventual death … or she could fight this motherfucking vampire!
Vampire.
Something inside her, something primal, took over.
The pain receded as Rose snapped against the vampire’s hold with such force, he stumbled away from her. She used that momentum, lifting her right knee to slam her foot into his gut with all the strength inside her.
He flew and smacked against the opposite wall with a sickening thud of his skull.
Unlike Judd, however, he just shook his head and lifted it, preternatural silver eyes glowing in the dark as he bared his teeth and unleashed an animalistic growl. Then he was on her, a blur through the night that took her to the cold ground with so much force, her skull slammed into the concrete.
It was the kind of hit to the head that surely would’ve knocked out someone else, Rose thought vaguely as she blinked, stunned. Yet she had no time to think on this, and not because the vampire was on her again, his teeth piercing the flesh on the other side of her neck.
But because something else was happening to her.
A golden shimmer danced across her vision as this weight, this unbelievably heavy weight that she hadn’t even been aware of, seemed to lift from her body.
“What the …” The vampire sat up, staring at her in confusion, her blood dripping from his chin.
That’s when Rose realized the golden shimmer was a light peeling away from her body. She sat up, lifting her hand, and watched the light mimic her movement. It was shaped like the outline of her, like a silhouette. The vampire scrambled off her to watch as the light moved as one toward the center of her chest until it amalgamated into one large, glowing ball.
“Oh my—”
It exploded, throwing Rose to the ground and the vampire into a nearby trash can.
Darkness fell over the alley again.
A tingling sensation brought Rose’s hand to her neck.
“Holy fuck,” she whimpered, feeling her flesh knit together.
Shaking, she touched the vampire’s other wound.
Blood smeared her fingers … but the wounds were gone.
And the alley was no longer pitch-black. It was gray, and she could see the trash cans clearly … she could see the vampire clearly, his silver eyes as bright.
Night vision.
As Rose sat up, her limbs felt strange, like for years there had been a heaviness in them, and now, only lightness and strength.
The vampire stood, staring at her in disbelief. Rose laughed at the thought, the sound disconcerting in