step to the left, coming to a stop in front of…Uri?
Oh, shit.
“No!” I lunged toward Uri, but Grayson snagged my waist and hugged me to his chest.
The super vamp’s mouth curled up at the corner. “Oh, you really care about this one, don’t you?” His eyes narrowed. “How does it feel to know you’re powerless to save him?”
“Please don’t.” I struggled against Grayson, but he held me firm.
“Fee, don’t,” Uri said. He shook his head. “Don’t… Don’t look.”
Grayson tried to force me to look away, but I fought him, and he had no choice but to settle for holding me to him.
“You ready, little woman,” super vamp said. He kept his gaze on me while I locked eyes with Uri.
The gunshot was like a slug to my chest, knocking the breath from my lungs and bringing fresh tears to my eyes. It choked me, squeezed my heart in a vise, but I didn’t look away, even as Uri toppled onto his side. I didn’t look away as the life bled from his eyes.
I didn’t look. Away. I… I couldn’t…I
A keening sound filled the air, surrounding me.
“Hush, hush.”
Grayson rocked me, and I realized that the low keening sound that filled the air…it was me.
Super vamp strode over and held the gun up to Grayson’s forehead. “Almost broken, but not quite,” he said. “I wonder if this will help.”
A chill swept over my body, and then a loud crack cut through the air.
I jerked, ice blooming on my chest as for a moment I thought he’d pulled the trigger, but he was looking off to the left, at the ground where one of his team lay dead, head at a funny angle.
A figure stood over the dead vamp, brushing off his hands as if he’d touched something unsavory.
Jasper looked right at me and smiled thinly. “Don’t worry,” he drawled. “The cavalry has arrived.”
Wait, if he was here, then—
The heat of my power exploded like a tsunami through my veins as my Loup roared to the surface.
The super vamp looked down at me, confused.
“You ready, little man.” My words were garbled as my mouth shifted to wolf fangs. “My turn.”
I attacked.
Cora
The weaselly science guy stares at me with round eyes. Okay, so I’ve just materialized in his lab and killed two guards with ejections of power from my hands, but like fuck has he not seen magic before. He works for a secret group experimenting on vamps for godsake.
“Fix him.” I point to Hunter, who’s propped up against the wall. “You must have an antidote.”
The flicker of his eyelids tells me he does.
“I’m going to give you till the count of three to comply, then I’ll assume that you’re useless to me and fry your ass.” I light up my hands with electrical power. “One. Two.”
He moves fast for an old guy and is across the room by a cabinet in less than a second. “I have it. I have something that might help.”
“Might isn’t good enough, buddy.”
He holds a vial out to me like a sacred offering. “I can’t guarantee. The serum is for vamps, not Loup, and I told him that. I told him it could kill him, but he took it anyway.”
Fuck… I look down at Hunter. Why the fuck would he…Fee. He did it for Fee. Damn if that isn’t the perfect redemption arc.
“This might help,” scrawny scientist dude says. “It could neutralize the effects. Right now, the serum is tearing apart his genetic code and attempting to rebuild it. This should halt and reverse the process.”
“Give it to him, and just know if he dies, you die.”
He nods and hurries over to Hunter, grabbing an empty syringe on the way. He administers the new serum and then quickly steps away from Hunter.
Tick tock. “Well?”
“It should be working by—”
Hunter takes a lungful of air, his body arching on the inhalation. I stop myself from rushing over to him; there’s no way I’m taking my eyes off bozo science guy.
“Hunter? Hunter, can you hear me?”
He takes several breaths. “What happened? Fee?”
“Jasper’s gone after Fee. The wards are down. How are you feeling?”
He rubs his chest. “Like I got kicked in the chest by a rhino.”
“Hey, blinky!”
The scientist looks at me.
“Check his vitals.”
“Um…I’d rather not get too close.”
“Would you rather I incinerate your ass?”
Yeah, that gets him moving.
Hunter growls as the scientist gets closer.
I glare at the Loup. “Stop it. Let him check you over so we can get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m fine.” But he holds out his wrist