Page 121

It was a vampire; that was certain. Jamie couldn’t see clearly enough to get a look at his eyes, but only another vampire could hold his own against Luc that way. No human would have him fighting so furiously. They’d be broken in mere moments.

And then Luc was on the ground, this strange vampire on top of him. Clawing and biting and tearing.

Jamie’s heart stopped in his chest.

The stranger was tearing clear through Luc’s throat.

Luc wasn’t getting up.

He was still trying—legs kicking at the dust, arms pushing up against the stranger’s chest—but he was weakening; it was clear.

Luc was still fighting. But he was losing.

Jamie was holding on to the passenger side door so hard his fingers were starting to hurt, his knuckles turning white from the effort.

He’d asked Jay to drive, unsure of his own steadiness after the force of that vision, something he was beginning to regret as Jay sped through another solidly red light.

“Where’d you pass your driver’s test? The autobahn?”

He tried calling Luc’s phone for the tenth time. Straight to voicemail again. And of course, this being Luc, his voicemail was just that bland robot voice reciting the different digits of his phone number. Jamie couldn’t even hear his vampire’s voice in his time of panic.

It was the exact opposite of reassuring.

He would have been tempted to scream in frustration if he weren’t almost certain the act would send Jay careening into the car next to them.

“I haven’t taken any test,” Jay informed him calmly as the car he’d almost T-boned honked at them. “But Danny’s been taking me to practice in the parking lots around Hyde Park.”

“How old are you again?”

Jay looked thoughtful. “Somewhere around two hundred and fifty, I think. It’s easy to start to lose track a little.”

That was such a trip to think about. The little vampire was a strange mix of naivete and unfathomable life experience. Jamie really wanted to sit down with the guy and pick his brain. Some other time, perhaps. One when Jamie wasn’t terrified for the life of his destined mate and lover.

And himself, given the way Jay was driving.

Jamie tried Luc for the eleventh time. “You’re that old and you don’t have a license?”

“You do realize that any identification any of us older vampires has is completely false, right? Luc may have a license from some black market contact, but that doesn’t make it valid or legal.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jamie muttered. “But where the fuck is Luc is the question.”

At that, Jay dug into his pocket and handed over his phone, Jamie’s soul leaving his body only a little as the car swerved wildly with the vampire’s switch to one hand on the wheel. “Try Danny.”

Of fucking course. Danny and Roman. If Jamie hadn’t been panicking so much, he might have thought of it himself.

He’d woken up from his vision in a fog-headed daze, his mom shaking him, and Jay and his sister standing by with open mouths.

His sister had claimed he’d looked like something from The Exorcist , his eyes rolled back with only the whites showing, but Jamie hadn’t given them much of a chance for a debriefing.

He’d grabbed Jay, tugging him out of the house while shouting a hurried goodbye to his mother and sister, and shoved him into the driver’s seat of the car, directing him to the neighborhood pool where the corpse had been found. Luc had told him they’d be starting the search with the bodies.

But all that had so far proven to be pretty fucking fruitless, with no sign of Luc anywhere.

But Danny and Roman would be with him, right?

Jamie let out a long, slow breath at the thought. It was going to be okay.

He knew he had at least a little bit of time. Not much—Luc in the vision had been wearing the same clothes Jamie had last seen him in, so whatever was going to happen was most likely to do so today. But it had definitely been dusk. They had at least an hour until the sun started to set.

Danny picked up on the second ring, and Jamie was mortified to feel tears welling up behind his eyes in sheer relief. “Jay?” Danny’s voice was full of friendly concern. “Is everything all right, honey?”

Jamie cleared his throat, willing the tears away. Now was not the time. “It’s Jamie. I need to talk to Luc.”

“Oh! Um, have you tried calling him? He’s not with us at the moment.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Jamie registered—just barely—Danny explaining how they had split into two groups, how Luc was with the twins while he and Roman were on their own search.

How no, he didn’t have the twins’ numbers, only Luc’s.

But it was hard for Jamie to focus on the words.

His head was spinning, and there was a sour taste in his mouth.

This was all so fitting for one of his useless fucking visions. Knowledge of Luc in danger, with absolutely no way to get a proper hold of him. No way to help. No way to prevent it.

Jamie hung up the phone without saying goodbye.

He tried to get control of himself, drawing in deep, shaky breaths. He wasn’t going to admit defeat just yet.

He needed to focus on what he did know, not on what he was missing.

He closed his eyes, ignoring Jay’s questioning, and thought back on his vision, pulling it up in his mind’s eye.

He did his best to ignore the brutal fighting, the horrible sight of Luc’s injuries.

He focused instead on the background details, the desert surroundings.

Because Luc and his opponent were definitely out in the desert. A rocky, hilly area. Jamie saw saguaros. Ocotillos.

Of course, those particular desert floras were fucking everywhere in the area surrounding Tucson. Jamie bit back a groan of frustration.

There . As the pair tussled to the ground, a glimpse of a signpost. A trailhead? Jamie couldn’t see the side with any lettering on it, of course. That would just be too fucking easy, wouldn’t it?

Still, it was something. He opened his eyes and thought back on the trails he’d walked with his family over the years. Some he could rule out immediately—different terrain, too flat or too sparse—and some he had to think over more carefully, comparing them to what he’d seen in the vision.

There was one—yes. Jamie knew it. He knew it.

Gate’s Pass.

“Pull over,” Jamie urged, turning to Jay. “I know where we need to go.”

Jay did as he asked—pulling the car to the side of the road quickly enough that he almost swiped the mirrors off another car as he did so—and they scrambled to switch places, Jamie taking over the wheel.

He tossed the phone to Jay. “Call Danny again. I’ll tell him where to meet us.”

Jamie wanted both him and Roman there. With enough vampire backup, Luc wouldn’t have to fight alone.

And Luc would be fine then, right? He’d be totally, 100 percent just fine .

It didn’t matter that Jamie had never been able to change an outcome before. Just because something had never happened didn’t mean it never would . Life was full of firsts, if people were living it right.

Jamie had never been in love before Luc, had he? He’d never met anyone who set his blood on fire and made him feel like he was perfect exactly as he was. Who made him feel needed and necessary, like he was vital to their very existence.

But now here he was. Here they were.

And Luc would not be taken out by some lowlife feral vampire dickhead . That wasn’t how their future was going to play out. No way.

Jamie would get there in time.

He had to.