The Beta

by Annie Nicholas

  And she knew fate had played a hand in this too. Twice in two days she’d run into Daedalus, and she believed in destiny. She’d also met Rob.

  Her gut twisted as her cellphone beeped. Glancing at the message, her fate was sealed. They doubled her fee to take the contract.

  The vampire leaned over the edge of the building and waved as if daring her to take the shot.

  Racing to her car, she yanked her keys out her pocket and pressed the button on the remote to open the trunk. She had minutes to do this. It would probably be her only chance. Damn Rob and his connection to the Nosferatu.

  She snapped open her long flat case and pulled out her miniature crossbow, then grabbed a wooden bolt, the next best thing to a stake. She ran across the street, knelt, and aimed.

  Rob stood next to Daedalus, waving his hands in the air like they were arguing. Damn, look at him standing up to that monster. Pride swelled in her chest. She could really use a man like that in her life, someone with enough balls to confront her when she was making a mistake, like now.

  The vampire stood inside her scope mounted on the crossbow. With a steady hand, she pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 6

  “Look, you love Sugar and she loves you. That’s the important part. Maybe getting an objective view point on your relationship would help.” Robert extended his hands out to Daedalus.

  “You want us to see a therapist? Who the hell deals with vampires, Robert?”

  “Okay, not a therapist but you’ve got friends. Maybe Spice can help. She became a werewolf for Eric.”

  “Fucking rub it in, man.” If looks could kill, Robert was a dead shifter walking.

  “Is that it? Spice choosing to be part of the pack? Is that why you’re all twisted in knots lately?”

  “Wouldn’t you be if you were in my shoes? Sugar won’t make that kind of sacrifice for me. If I could become human, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I’m not feeling the love. She doesn’t get what I am, and now she’s trying to control how I feed.” He shook his head. “When she came back for me, after the whole Ayumu fiasco, I thought I could take whatever she offered and be happy but not anymore.”

  “Fuck.” A hole formed in Robert’s gut as he listened to Daedalus pour his heart out. “Does anyone else know how you feel?”

  “No. I barely understand how I feel.”

  “You need to tell her. Now.” He pulled out his cellphone and stepped closer, offering it to the vampire. A soft twang caught his attention. He twisted to face the street and a sharp pain pierced his chest, knocking the air from his lungs.

  He gasped, but it only made the pain worse. Staring at his chest, he couldn’t believe what he saw. An arrow stuck out of him. An arrow? Who the fuck used arrows? The world spun, and he heard a rush of words from Daedalus but couldn’t understand what he said. His knees gave out and he fell.

  And kept falling. Shouldn’t he have hit the roof surface by now? Seemed a long, long way down.

  * * * *

  Esther watched Rob fall off the roof. Her heart stalled, and she couldn’t get it to start again. The world compressed around her, making it hard to breathe let alone move.

  Rob clutched the bolt in his chest. The one she’d shot. It was meant for Daedalus, but the split second she squeezed the trigger Rob stepped forward and took the hit.

  The clatter of her crossbow hitting the sidewalk shattered her nightmare state. What the fuck had she done?

  Her gentleman werewolf flipped mid-air, curling around his wound, and landed on his back with a loud thud that she felt through her boots.

  She was halfway across the street at a dead run before her brain caught up. “No, no, no…” The word skipped like a broken record. Something warm stained her cheeks. Wiping it with her hand, she found tears. She hadn’t cried in years, but then she’d never killed an innocent before.

  His body lay in the dented, cracked concrete. Blood formed like a big amaryllis bloom on the front of his t-shirt. Each shallow breath sent a gurgle of blood from his lungs.

  Kneeling at his side, she didn’t know what to do. Her hands fluttered over his chest, knowing she needed to stop the bleeding but afraid to touch him. She couldn’t get past the fact she’d hurt someone she actually liked.

  “Rob?” She brushed her fingertips over his cheeks, her hands trembled so much it made them difficult to control. “What have I done?”

  “What do you mean?” An iron strong grip grabbed her shoulder and yanked her to her feet.

  Her eyes met the black, soulless glare of Daedalus, a Prime of the Nosferatu clan. The Infernal Champion of the Brotherhood, Vile Butcher of Babylon, and Subjugator of the Accords, to name a few of his titles.

  As if a bucket of ice-cold water had been dumped over her head, her terror and shock transformed at the sight of her target. She snapped back into herself and met his stare. “It was meant for you, Bearer of Ill Will.” With Rob dying at her feet, she didn’t deserve to live. Her only salvation was if the vampire finished her before she had to witness Rob’s last breath.

  The Nosferatu dropped her. “What?”

  Before she could respond a clash of raw power penetrated her mental shields and entered her mind. Any human could keep a vampire from their thoughts if they bothered to learn how. Daedalus proved too strong for her to block even with her years of practice.

  He raped her mind like a savage and flipped through her thoughts as if reading a book.

  Frozen and helpless, she watched from a dark corner of her head until he tore her identity from her grasp. She cried out, the sound echoing down the street.

  “A slayer?” The vampire stumbled from her and leaned on the brick building behind him as his gaze darted to Rob. “That bolt was meant for me.” He knelt beside the werewolf. “Robert?” With a gentle shake, he repeated the question. “Come on, buddy, open your eyes. You need to shift.”

  Buddy? They were friends? The heavy despair in Daedalus’s voice only confirmed it. She stared at the Nosferatu, a killer of thousands, as a tear slipped from the corner of his eye.

  All this time she thought the vampire used her naïve Rob. It didn’t appear like that at all. She took a deep shaky breath. “Shouldn’t I call nine-one-one?” Her cellphone trembled in her hand as she held it out.

  “No use. There’s too much damage.” He shook Rob harder. “Robert, let’s go. Time to wake up, we’ve got miles to run.” The snap in his command came with practiced ease.

  Rob’s eyelids fluttered open with a weak groan.

  “Listen to me.” Daedalus hovered over his face. “You need to shift. The change will heal the damage.”

  Her werewolf blinked. “Esther?”

  She crept closer until he could see her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Fuck, he didn’t know she’d shot him. “Yes.” A sob wracked her chest. “Shift, Rob.” She wiped her nose with her hand. “Please.”

  “Can’t—” His eyelids closed and his chest shuddered with an exhale, then he didn’t move again.

  “Rob!” His name tore from her raw throat. “I’m so sorry.” She glanced at Daedalus and regretted it.

  Death stared back at her.

  She shrank away and got to her feet. “It was meant for you, asshole. Why’d he have to move at the last minute?” All her stakes were in the trunk of her car, so she palmed her thirty-eight from her shoulder holster.

  He mirrored her movements and moved around Rob’s body. “I’m going to make you suffer, slayer, and listen to you beg for the mercy you never showed him.”

  This was the monster she hunted, not the one who just shed a tear. “You might have played nice vampire for him but I know who you really are.”

  “I am many things, but to you I am Pain.” He moved so quickly she sensed his body more than saw it.

  Only her keen reflexes kept her out of his grasp. She spun, aimed, and squeezed the trigger, but she may as well have used a spit ball straw for all the damage the bullets did. She knew the bullets caused
vampires pain, but Daedalus didn’t even grimace.

  He stormed toward her and clutched her throat before slamming her into the building. Her heels tap danced against the brick as they dangled, and she tried to draw breath, but his vise-like grip wouldn’t let the smallest amount of air in.

  “This is just the beginning, Esther.”

  With the lack of oxygen, her vision faded yet she did hear a faint growl of surprise to her right. She glanced and saw the blurred outline of Rob in full beast form getting to his feet. Bipedal, he stood well over six feet tall, covered in a glossy chocolate brown fur. He flexed the long claws extending from his fingertips, and the ears on top of his wolfen head folded back.

  Her heart soared, and she heard the angels sing.

  He lived.

  And she was about to die.

  A furious cry shred the night just before Daedalus’s grip was torn from her throat and she fell to the ground. Coughing up a lung and dragging in a breath thick with air, she tried to stand. Her knees didn’t think it a good idea though. She leaned on her hands and blinked her vision clear.

  Rob, in beast form, grappled with the Nosferatu, keeping his body between her and the vampire. The fool was defending her.

  With a twist of speed, her werewolf pinned the ancient vampire under his clawed hands. Teeth bared, he snapped at his friend’s head.

  Daedalus held off the attack. Barely. If Rob finished her task and killed the Nosferatu, he would never forgive her once he found out the truth. A lead ball of certainty sank in her gut.

  Never.

  “Rob, stop!” she shouted. “I’m the one who shot you.”

  He stopped mid-bite, with Daedalus’s arm sandwiched between his sharp teeth. They stared at each other for a moment before the vampire nodded. Rob opened his mouth, and Daedalus slipped his arm out, then wrapped the werewolf in a bone-cracking hug.

  “Dumbass, you hooked up with a slayer.” The vampire released Rob and rose from the ground.

  The beast swung around with a sharp glare. It almost sliced her in half.

  “You stepped in my line of sight. I was aiming at him.” She pointed at Daedalus, suddenly feeling like she was back in grade school.

  Rob tilted his head, ears folded back as he stalked around her. A low growl emanated from his chest.

  “You’re either very good at what you do or very stupid for taking a contract on my kind.” The Nosferatu examined his arm, bending it with ease.

  “I’m not feeling very smart at the moment. I refused the initial contract.” She pulled out the phone from her pocket. Both males tensed as she moved. “Take it easy, boys. I’m not deadly with a BlackBerry. Look at the messages. They doubled the cash out.”

  Daedalus pocketed the phone without reading it. “Grab her. My car is around the corner. We’ll finish this at home.”

  Without any effort, Rob lifted her in his arms gently.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry.” And she was. Even though he’d never believe her, she needed him to hear it. “I don’t think I would have been able to live with myself if you’d had died.” The emotional roller coaster of the last half hour made the truth easy to admit. She leaned her head on his shoulder, the soft fur a small comfort. Her strength disappeared and with it her desire to fight.

  Rob lived.

  What was wrong with her? She never made rash decisions where marks were concerned. What made her grab her crossbow without a plan? The money would have been nice, but if it were the driving force she’d have taken the contract in the first place.

  It almost seemed like fate grabbed her by the ass and turned off her brain. The target so easily accessible and the shitload of payout dangling like a carrot. She’d fucked it all up though. No kill and worse, no Rob.

  They approached a two door black sports car. Daedalus held open the passenger door. He folded the front seat down so Rob could squeeze into the backseat with her.

  The drive didn’t take long with the vampire’s heavy foot on the accelerator. He parked close to Rob’s brownstone. “I’ll get you some clothes. We don’t need to cause trouble if one of the neighbors is watching, and I don’t need any more grief from Sugar.” Daedalus slammed the driver’s side door shut.

  Rob melted back into his human form next to her, his glare never left hers as his eyes changed from bright amber to sharp green.

  The transformation fascinated her. All these years in her profession, but until yesterday, she’d never been this close to a shifter as he changed.

  “For fuck’s sake, Esther. A slayer?” The contempt in his expression hurt. “Is this why you’ve been after me? Using my friendship with Daedalus to get close enough to kill him?” The car shook as he punched the front seat.

  She shrank back. The moonlight gleamed on his bare skin and waves of fury emanated from his body. “I didn’t know you were friends. I thought he was using you, like most of his race does.”

  The dark glance he shot at her brooked no belief.

  “When I approached you on the street, I’d hoped to follow you so I could find his lair but—but…” She swallowed with a mouth gone dry. “You kept surprising me. You never do what I expect. Like now, why am I still alive? You should have killed me by now. I’m all unbalanced around you, which is a terrible thing in my profession.”

  He tapped at the fresh scar on his chest. “No shit.”

  “I’ve got good aim.” She glanced out the window. “You should be careful dealing with vampires, Rob.”

  “Not everything is what you think you see, Esther. You’re a human looking in from the outside and only gazing at the surface. There’s a whole ocean of stuff under the stories humans are told.”

  She blinked. “Like how you could heal the way you did?”

  “Yeah, well, that was a surprise for me too. It’s why my pack needs Daedalus. We’ve lost too much knowledge over the centuries.” He watched the Nosferatu return with a pile of clothes. “I won’t let you kill him.” He directed his stare at her, making his deadly intentions clear if she crossed that line.

  Chapter 7

  “I get the message.” Esther frowned at Robert.

  He doubted she did. Chances were pretty good she’d take another crack at Daedalus if the opportunity arose. Then he’d have to kill her. Wouldn’t it be his luck his first kill would be a woman he liked.

  The car door opened and she startled. Daedalus tossed some clothes at Robert then gripped the slayer’s arm, yanking her out.

  Betrayal left a sour taste in Robert’s mouth. “Store her in my bathroom while I gather the others.” The order slipped from him. He noticed Daedalus do a double take, but he escorted Esther without question.

  Nothing like being on the brink of death to give a male perspective. He’d been ready to tear the vampire’s throat out for Esther. The most shocking thing was that he’d almost accomplished it. Sometime in the last twenty-four hours Esther had become his. What the hell was he going to do about that? She’d used and abused him.

  His beast writhed inside. It wanted to storm up to the second floor, break into the bathroom, and mark her…or spank her…or both. Taking a deep breath, he sat back and went through the calming exercises he used to control the beast. Thankfully, it also worked on the raging erection under the pile of clothes he held in his lap.

  With a shake of his head, he dismissed both beast and Esther to the back of his mind. Tonight he needed to be the pack’s beta. One more day before his alpha got home. One. More. Day.

  He got dressed in a pair of nylon workout pants and a green t-shirt that read Never Moon a Werewolf. Reflexively, he reached for his glasses, but they must have smashed on the sidewalk when he’d fallen from the roof.

  He jogged over to the brownstone. No one would have guessed he’d had an arrow in his chest and internal injuries less than an hour ago. Eric needed to know about that shifting trick. It hurt like hell to heal that fast though, and it took a lot of energy. He needed food, a truck load of it, to build back his reserve.
/>
  As he opened the door he expected to hear his roommates arguing inside but silence greeted him.

  Daedalus descended the stairs. “I wedged a chair under the doorknob. She’s not going anywhere.”

  “I’ll go wake up the others if you get Sugar.” Some nights they stayed awake late and hung out with the Nosferatu, but it was a weeknight. Day jobs awaited Tyler, Katrina, and Sam. Only Eric and himself made their own work hours. They tended to be night owls anyway. Maybe that’s how this odd camaraderie with Daedalus developed from trainee to friend?

  “Let them sleep. We’ll talk first, then you can decide what to do.”

  He had to decide? Watching the vampire disappear into the kitchen, Robert did a little what-the-fucking before following. “So, what’s going on? Why is Esther trying to turn you into ashes?”

  Daedalus stood bent over, digging inside the fridge and tossing food onto the counter. “For money, it’s the nature of her profession.” He organized the bread, sandwich meat, cheese, and mayo next to each other.

  Drool dripped from the corner of Robert’s mouth, to his horror, and he quickly wiped it away.

  “Vampires have been hunted by slayers since we’ve existed. They get better weapons and the rules shift, but nothing else changes. They try to kill us and we do the same.” He glanced at Robert. “The real question is who hired her? And traditionally, I’m supposed to kill her.”

  “No.” The word was out of his mouth before his brain registered it but there laid the truth. He’d fight Daedalus again to protect her, and maybe for the sandwich he was making. “If I’m letting Talon live, I’m keeping Esther.”

  Lifting his head, the vampire cocked a non-existent eyebrow, then slid the best looking double-decker sandwich Robert had ever seen toward him. “Keeping her?”

  “I mean keeping her alive.” He grabbed the sandwich and resisted the urge to gobble the thing straight off the plate.

  “Slayers are dangerous, manipulative people. I peeked in her head. She’s good at what she does.”