Page 32 of Fear

Evan didn’t spend long in the bathroom. He came out shirtless, and grabbed the one he’d worn earlier from the floor, on our way out. I brushed over his thoughts enough to understand he didn’t want his friends and coworkers to see a different shirt. He wanted the appearance of not having taken his clothes off.

If they smelled us, they’d know, but if he could keep his distance and they only saw us, they’d wonder. He knew it was a long shot, but no way was he going to show up in a different shirt.

“I’ll take you home,” he told me while we walked through the hotel hallway.

“Thank you.”

“You didn’t have a detail on you at TBC.”

“No.”

“We keep someone on Patience anytime she leaves the coterie house.”

“She isn’t a fighter.”

“And you are?”

“If necessary. I have a driver, but so far, no guard.”

He started the vehicle and turned to look at me. “You don’t drive?”

“It’s never been an issue before. Marco’s arranged for someone to begin teaching me next month.”

Chapter 10

Ryan

I heard it all, but I wasn’t sure what she was up to.

An operative with a listening device was situated close to the eagles in TBC, and I’d bugged Evan’s hotel suite the day he moved in.

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Etta was playing human, but why?

I couldn’t let her know I heard anything in the hotel suite because I didn’t want Josef doing a deep electronics sweep, but I’d learned something that had awakened my lust, and I knew it wasn’t her power that’d affected me, but I’d have sworn it was.

Etta wanted someone to dominate her. When two vampires have sex, they can’t choose power exchange based on preference. It’s based on their power level, and the only vampire in town stronger than Etta was Marco.

I couldn’t give away that I knew this, but since she hadn’t showered, I could plausibly scent that she’d had sex with him as long as I got to her quickly. Did I want to verify my sense of smell? Most vampires assumed we could smell at least as well as them, so it probably didn’t make much difference. Officially, we weren’t supposed to verify anything unless we planned to kill them.

I walked to Evan’s SUV, shut down all personal scents, teleported myself to the backseat, and wrapped the shadows around me. I waited until we were on the interstate to lose the shadows and join the conversation. Evan was explaining the rules of the road to her, so I said, “Modern day cars let you know if someone’s in the lane beside you, and tell you when you get too close while parking, but I believe it’s best if people learn without technological assistance.”

I was directly behind Evan, so he’d recognize me before he could get a weapon aimed at me. However, I hadn’t expected Etta to go into fight mode quite so fast, and in less than two seconds, she was draining me.

Again.

She stopped as soon as she realized it was me, but I was cold again, the world was fuzzy, and I swam in a miasma of nausea.

“Damnit, Ryan. You have to...” She leaned through the seats and put her hand on mine. Heat flowed into my arm, and then instantaneously surged into every cell of my being. It was like the physical connection let her put it everywhere at once, so it didn’t have to stream into me through my arm.

It was in this moment I realized she’d been sandbagging. Etta was astronomically more powerful than I’d realized.

“Does Marco know?” I asked.

“Why are you here, Slayer?”

“That isn’t the question,” Evan said from the front seat. “The question is how the fuck did you get here?”

I shrugged and met his gaze in the rearview mirror. “I’m a Slayer. I can go anywhere.”