by Holly Ryan
Sawyer strode away from him, his eyes flaming mad. “We go now,” he growled.
We went then.
After what seemed like a shorter trip this time, Night’s Fall dropped us on the front sidewalk of my vamps’ house. Upon landing, everyone stayed upright but me. I slipped from Jacek and Sawyer’s grasp to the ground, my gaze pinned to the cemetery.
Or what was left of the cemetery.
A thick cloud of dust smothered it almost completely from view even though it was right next door.
I gripped the dead grass so I wouldn’t scream. “Where’s Eddie?”
“He’s inside. He was...” Jacek knelt by my side and traded glances with Sawyer. “He’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
He wiped some of the gore from my cheek. “I would never lie to you.”
Inside my shaken, tired, bruised brain, I knew that. I couldn’t even guess what had happened to Eddie, but I needed to believe he would be okay for just a few minutes longer until I checked on him myself.
I held the book up to Sawyer. “Hold this, please.”
He took it and then helped me to my feet again. “Belle, you’re in no shape to go after Paul right now.”
“Please,” I begged, my voice catching. “I’ll just be a second. I can’t handle much more than looking anyway. I just need to see it.”
Night’s Fall lay at my feet, and the symbols along the black steel shriveled up. The sword bounced and bent as white sparks fizzed down the blade in a weird lightshow.
Sawyer picked it up and chucked it into the backyard. “Let’s go, then.”
Cleo led the way to the cemetery gate, somehow knowing that was where we headed, and two of my three vamps propped me upright as we walked, their steps quieter than a whisper. Inside the gate, debris and dust waved around the statues and headstones, creating movement when there shouldn’t be any. I shivered all the way down to my gut, and my vamps held me tighter.
Ahead through the thick gloom, the vague outline of the mausoleum appeared. The stone structure had been levelled into a pile of rubble and then swept to one side, away from where the trapdoor would be located. Since the inside had been down a set of stairs, a pit had opened up in the ground. Dust poured from it, as if belching up a century’s worth of grit.
I stepped closer. Sure enough, the trapdoor was open. The Tunnel to Nowhere. Paul had really done it, the bastard.
“It was over shortly after it began,” Sawyer said, tightening his arm around my waist. “We came when I got your text, waited for a time, and then Paul pushed us around like pinballs so he could get inside.”
Paul’s strength must’ve been cranked to eleven, then. Someone Sawyer’s size would never be compared to a pinball, otherwise. I shook my head, doing my best not to freak out over Paul right now. That would come later when I could put one foot in front of the other again.
A moan sounded to our left. Cleo growled and ducked her head low.
“I smell warm blood,” Jacek rasped.
I searched the haze painting the night but didn’t immediately see anything. Jacek and Sawyer’s thirst burned apparent in their eyes, so we definitely weren’t alone. They bared their fangs as we stepped closer to the side of the mausoleum stacked with stones. My gaze skipped past something that shouldn’t be here, and I did a double-take to make sure. A pair of shoes stuck out from the side of the collapsed mausoleum, some of the heavy stones pinning the legs they were attached to. Hovered over the owner of them was a vampire, drinking her fill.
Running on instinct and adrenaline alone, I broke free from my vamps and lunged with my stake at the ready. My boot connected with her ass and flipped her off her meal. She snarled and dove for me, but I ended that shit fast. She splattered to the ground.
Thinking the victim could already be vamping, I turned, and then froze. Detective Appelt lay there, two fang marks in his neck and blood streaking his lips. He’d been bitten and he’d drunk. He was alive now, judging from his heavy pants and normal eye color, but it wouldn’t last. For how long, I didn’t know. It depended on how much blood he’d had to drink.
“Shit,” I whispered and took a step closer, gripping my stake. Shit shit shit. The backs of my eyes burned as I stared down at him, noting the cuts and bruises up and down his arms, his tie ripped to bits, and his suit jacket that was hardly more than a piece of fabric. Red streaks smeared the badge on his belt.
He gazed up at me and tried to lift his head, his whole face puckered in an effort to spit out words.
“He was here when it happened, Belle. He tried to stop it as much as we did,” Sawyer said, his voice low and edged with thirst. “I thought he’d already gone when we took Eddie back to the house, but we didn’t check because you needed us.”
Detective Appelt glanced at the stake in my hand and then up into my eyes to peer inside my soul. Not like my eyes at all. But maybe my nose. And my chin.
His throat bobbed several times before words finally formed: “Trust...me.”
I didn’t though. Not yet. Not when I had so many questions. But he was near death and then vamping, so if I staked him, I would never get answers. Of course getting those answers would mean facing the truth about Mom...and him.
I never knew my dad, and Mom clammed up tight when I had the balls to ask. As a kid, I tried to tell myself her pregnancy was one of those immaculate conceptions that sometimes went around, or a fertile mystery seed in a magical watermelon. That would be a lot simpler than this.
Because this...this new knowledge was too much for one person to handle, on top of everything else, and I was cracking like a china shop in an earthquake. I didn’t have the strength right then to do the mental gymnastics needed to survive my immediate future, but right now I was alive. I had to focus on that and hope everything else would fall into place. It very well could with my support system, which was down one, but I would see to it that Eddie bounced back so hard that it flung his glasses off his perfect face. And then I would retrieve them and put them back on, of course.
I looked behind me at two of the three of those who had my back and whom I trusted with my entire heart. And Cleo, too. “Guys, I think this might be my...my dad.” I tasted the word on my tongue—salty just like my tears. “Say hi?”
Now read the rest of the series!
Devils Are Prickly Bastards
Slayers Give Happy Endings
Some Swans Don’t Swim
Or get The Slayer’s Reverse Harem Complete Series Box Set for a cheaper price than books 2-6 combined!
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About the Author
Holly Ryan is a pen name for a USA Today bestselling author who one day said, “Screw it. I’m gonna write books with some serious sizzle.” She’s fueled by wine, which is where the idea probably came from.
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Also by Holly Ryan
A Touch of Dragon Fire
Forked Tongues Are Fun
Bros Come Before Hordes
The Slayer's Reverse Harem
Vampires Don't Give Hickeys
Cuddling Sucks in Coffins
Stakes Have Sword Envy
Devils Are Prickly Bastards
Slayers Give Happy Endings
Some Swans Don't Swim
Standalone
The Slayer's Reverse Harem: The Comple
te Series
A Touch of Dragon Fire: The Complete Series
