“The Jolly Rancher. Who’s got the fucking Jolly Rancher?”
Cue the eye contact between everybody in the van.
“That fake watermelon smell triggers my gag reflex,” Syphon bit out. “And I get carsick which is why I have to drive. So if the person who’s sucking on that red square of vomit-inducing nasty doesn’t spit it the fuck out now, I’m going to make sure I throw up in their lap.”
Pause. Longer pause.
And then Zypher cursed, turned his head . . . and spit the candy right out—
Onto the window he’d just put up. Where it stuck like a Post-it Note.
As everyone in the van fell into a chorus of Ewwwwwwws, the bastard picked the thing off, put down the window, and flicked it out into the bushes.
“You happy, Penelope,” he muttered as he reclosed the window. “Now, do you want to take a Tums and put a hot compress on your forehead, or can we get on with this?”
Syphon ten-and-two’d his hands and assumed the self-righteous composure of a deacon. “Not everyone has a stomach of steel.”
“No, shit,” Zypher said under his breath as the van started moving again.
In the back, Balz propped himself against the van’s side-wall, tucked his arms in, and closed his eyes. A little catnap was just the ticket. As long as Zypher didn’t decide to replace that Jolly Rancher with anything else that was artificially fruit flavored.
Lord help them all if he broke out the Starburst.
As Syn uttered the word that had been bounding around Jo’s brain, she expected to feel fear or be overcome with shock. Instead, a strange calmness suffused her tense body, easing all her muscles. The relief was eerie.
Then again, on some level, she had known all along, hadn’t she.
“We don’t know about you,” she said to them. “So you hide in plain sight and prey on humans—”
Loud curses rang out in the empty building. And then one of them said, “Don’t put your human bullshit on us. We’re hunted and trying to survive. You are a threat to us, not the other way around.”
Somebody else chimed in, “Those movies and books got us all wrong, sweetheart. So don’t get judgy until you know the truth we live.”
“Don’t call me sweetheart,” she muttered. Then she shook herself back into focus. “So what are they.”
She pointed to the corpses on the ground, the ones with the black blood and the stink. The ones that moved though they should be dead.
“They are our hunters.” The one with the Boston accent stepped forward. “And we just want to live our lives in peace. There’s none of that biting people and turning them, no soulless defilers of virgins, no garlic or capes or bats or wooden stakes.”
“You took my memories . . . I saw you here. Several nights ago. With a man with a goatee—”
“Male, with a goatee,” he corrected. “We don’t use the term ‘man,’ and yeah, you did. But listen, here is not the place for this kind of conversation.”
“But there’s not any place for this talk, is there.” She looked at Syn. “You’re going to take my memories again, aren’t you. Or are you going to kill me here and now?”
Jo was amazed she could be so calm. Then again, when the paranormal became real, it was as if you’d entered a video game. The action was in front of you, but the implications didn’t go further than two dimensions. After all, if vampires existed, was death even a thing?
“No,” the Bostonian said. “We’re not going to kill you.”
She looked at the bent-back man on the concrete again and thought of the decapitated body she’d seen wrapped around the fire escape. And then the one that had been skinned alive in that alley.
“But you’ve killed humans before.” She refocused on Syn. “Haven’t you. So what makes me different? I’ve got a lot of memories to erase. It’s got to be easier just to slit my throat, especially given how many times you’ve done that.”
No one said a thing.
And her eyes didn’t leave Syn.
“Is this what you apologized for?” she demanded.
“Yes,” he replied in a gravel voice.
“So what happens next if you’re not putting me in my grave?” As she spoke, she was aware she was asking about so much more than just the vampire revelation. “Tell me why I’m different.”
Before anyone could answer, a vehicle pulled up outside, the sound of the tires crunching over the debris coming through the hole in the building.
“It’s the doc,” one of the men—males—said. “And Syn,