Page 92 of New Nebraska Heat

“Yes, we should talk more about that soon, Detective. It’s extremely concerning, especially as I have my own experience to share, which may help. I have your number. I’ll be in touch soon.”

We made our excuses and left. With me in the middle, clinging tightly to their arms.

Dagger growled into his brother’s ear over my head. “What’s happening?”

“Maybe nothing. Just best to be safe. Let’s get Seb, Bryce and get to the stretch. If the invisible man’s in here, I want to draw him out into the car park.”

Both their nails lengthened into claws. It both scared and reassured me.

“You getting anything?” Hunter asked, sniffing the air.

“Can’t smell shit over all this perfume and booze,” Dagger snarled. “You?”

“Same. Let’s move.”

After updating Bryce, he enlisted the hotel’s security staff to form a circle around us as we walked through the hotel and into the car park. They split only for Seb, who’d gotten Hunter’s text to meet us. We pushed through the crowd, doing our best not to jostle anyone too hard. One waiter, however, nearly face planted, stumbling seemingly over his own feet before we’d even gotten close to him.

Hunter tensed beside me and murmured to Dagger, “Did you see that?”

Dagger nodded, jaw tight, and I followed his gaze to the poor waiter, trying to collect the mess he’d dropped off his tray.

“Pick up the pace everybody,” Dagger ordered.

Gerald was waiting with the door open, sporting a slight look of surprise. I motioned to enter the stretch, but Dagger blocked me with a fur-swathed hand. “Hold your horses, Cowgirl.” He dipped into his jacket pocket and took out a switchblade. The click and spike of the razor blade made me jump. “Don’t worry, it’ll be okay.”

He lunged into the limo, swiping his knife in broad arcs through the air, side to side, up and down the stretch’s length. Then he clambered out, nodding at us. “It’s clear. Come on, let’s go.”

Hunter strode into the car park’s center, the security guards backing away from his rampant aggression. He ripped off his jacket and shirt to reveal his enormous muscles coated in jaguar-patterned hair. “Are you there, you fucking pussy?” Hammering his chest with his thumb, he bellowed, “You see me, you gruesome fuck? I don’t hide like a fucking sewer rat. Not from anybody. You want her? You got to go through me and my brother. Come on, face us, you fucking coward!”

No answer came, except the whistling wind.

Hunter clambered into the stretch. Bryce and I got on one side and the others sat across from us. The twins were perched, alert, while Seb reached across and patted my hand. “It’ll be fine. You’d need an army to take on these two.”

That was the problem. Conrad had one.

The limo’s engine revved, and we roared off. I twisted in my seat to watch the giant hotel steadily get smaller in the rear window, ashamed that my anxieties seemed to be dictating everyone else’s behavior. It was probably just my imagination running wild.

A crumpled soda can danced across the asphalt far behind us, then suddenly flew in a wide arc, battering down the road.

The pre-winter gusts were strong in New Nebraska…

Sebastian

Iwasn’t a vain person. Not one for flexing in the mirror. But damn. I was looking good.

I’d been looking a bit pale the morning after truth or dare, so Dagger—the only one of us with any level of experience rendering medical aid—had drawn another few ounces of Serenity’s blood for me to drink. With her consent, of course.

I’d downed it before bed last night, and God, it tasted like nothing else in the world. Not this one, anyway. Perhaps the ambrosia of the gods of Olympus could compare. One sip and I’d sunk back on the pillows, content and guilty all at once, knowing what my cravings had done to her. I’d bound us forever. One sip, and I knew I could never leave her. That I was hers entirely, and not just in body, but in soul. In that sweet, yet crackling flavor I swore I could taste the power of her spirit, her sweet and forgiving instinct, her fierce perseverance. And it was part of me now, and I wanted and needed it forever.

It was clearer to me than ever before, I’d die without her.

For now, I was alive and blessed with her presence in my days and a bit of her blood to strengthen me. Today, I’d woken up feeling sharper than an ethereal blade. I’d stripped off for my usual morning shower and been striding past the full-length mirror on my way to the ensuite bathroom, thinking how hospitable it was for Hunter to give me such a spacious guest room rent free, and stopped in my barefooted tracks at the sight of my own body.

Mildly freaked out, I’d taken a tentative step closer to the morphed stranger in the reflection, squinting without my glasses. Now, still peering at the fuzzing image, I plucked them off the dresser and slipped them on. Goddamn!

My muscles had vastly increased in definition overnight. As if a sculptor had sidled in during my sleep and chipped away any traces of excess fat. I’d always tended toward slender and toned, but this ultra-shredded shit was ridiculous. I could see every single muscle my body had for the showing.

I did a double bicep flex and judged they had to have grown by at least two or three inches. My pecs, abs, legs, everything looked pumped up. Sadly, that didn’t include my frank and beans, but there’d never been a size issue there in the first place.