As usual, he was laughing at her. That was fine. Most people did. In fact, most people thought she was insane. Even her own family had laughed at her for years... until her twin had ended up married to a Dark-Hunter and had faced a vampire who had almost killed her.
Suddenly her family realized that her preternatural stories over the years weren't total hallucinations or fabrications.
"Yeah," she said to Richard, "I dusted one last night."
He rolled his eyes and laughed at her as he walked on past.
"You're welcome, Dick," she said under her breath as he kept going. The Daimon she'd killed had been hovering around the back door of Mike Anderson's, where Richard was known to take out the trash right before he got off work. If Tabitha hadn't killed the Daimon, Richard would most likely be dead now.
Whatever. She didn't really want thanks for what she did and she certainly didn't expect it.
She kept walking down the street, feeling extremely lonely tonight. How she wished she could live her life blindly, never knowing what was out here.
But she wasn't blind. She knew, and with that knowledge came the choice of either helping people or walking away. Never in her life had Tabitha been the kind of person who turned her back on someone in need. Her powers as an empath were too much for her sometimes. She felt the pain of others even more deeply than she felt her own.
It was what had drawn Ash to her in the beginning. Over the last three years, he had taught her several tricks to dampen down others' emotions and to focus on her own. He'd been a godsend to her and had done more for her sanity than anyone else. Still, his tricks didn't silence them totally.
At times it was all completely overwhelming. She was so bombarded by intense emotions that it set off hers and sometimes caused her to lash out verbally just from the stress of it.
So here she was, by herself, spending another lonely night walking the streets as she risked her life for people who mocked her.
Patrolling was certainly much more fun when she'd done it with a group of friends.
Tabitha forced herself not to remember Trish and Alex, who'd both died in the line of duty. But it was useless. Tears filled her eyes as she touched the jagged scar on her face that the Daimon Desiderius had given her. The worst sort of psycho, Desiderius had been out to kill her twin sister and brother-in-law. Luckily, Amanda and Kyrian had survived. Tabitha just wished she'd been killed that night instead of her friends. It wasn't right for them to pay such a high price when Tabitha had been the one to talk them into helping her in the first place.
God, why couldn't she have kept her mouth shut and just left them alone to live out their lives in ignorance and peace?
It was why she fought alone now. She would never again ask anyone to risk their life to do what she did.
They had a choice about this.
She didn't.
Tabitha slowed down as she got the familiar tickle down the center of her spine.
Daimons...
They were behind her.
Turning around, she knelt down and pretended to tie the laces on her boot. Meanwhile she was well aware of the six shadows that were closing in on her...
Valerius pulled at the edge of his right leather Coach glove to straighten it as he walked down the virtually abandoned street. As always, he was impeccably dressed in a long black cashmere coat, a black turtleneck, and black slacks. Unlike most Dark-Hunters, he wasn't a leather-wearing barbarian. He was the epitome of sophistication. Breeding. Nobility. His family had been descended from one of the oldest and most respected noble families of Rome. As a former Roman general whose father had been a well-respected senator, Valerius would have gladly followed in the man's footsteps had the Parcae, or Fates, not intervened.
But that was the past and Valerius refused to remember it. Agrippina was the only exception to that rule. She was the only thing he ever remembered from his human life.
She was the only thing worth remembering from his human life.
Valerius winced and focused his thoughts on other, much less painful things. There was a crispness in the air that announced winter would be here soon. Not that New Orleans had a winter, compared to what he'd been used to in D.C.
Still, the longer he was here the more his blood was thinning, and the cool night air was a bit chilly to him.
Valerius paused as his Dark-Hunter senses detected the presence of a Daimon. Tilting his head, he listened with his heightened hearing.
He heard a group of men laughing at their victim. And then he heard the strangest thing of all...
"Laugh it up, asshole. But she who laughs last, laughs longest and I intend to belly roll tonight."
A fight broke out.