“You’ll come for me, won’t you, Zane?”
Good thing they’d never fucked. If they had, knowing what was to come would have made the job so much harder.
Impossible.
Tony grabbed him and shoved Zane back against the side of the building. The bricks bit through his shirt. “I need to find her!”
Tony had slept with her. There was pain there. In his eyes. On his face. “Haven’t seen her.” Truth. Though he had a good idea where to start looking.
Dee would be licking her wounds. She’d need shelter. Someone she could trust.
Mistake.
Tony’s face mottled. The guy had always been so in control. So restrained. One of the reasons why he and Dee hadn’t lasted.
She’d needed a guy who didn’t understand control.
“That bastard Leo bit his own wrists open and the fucking guards didn’t check on him. He was in a padded cell, they thought he was safe. The vamp bled out, bled out!”
Zane blinked at that. Yeah, vamps could die from blood loss, but he’d never heard of a vamp taking his own life that way.
You had to want death pretty badly to take that route.
“Last night, he said some SOB named Grim was after Dee. She needs help. I’ve got to find her, help her—”
At that, Zane knocked the cop back. Tony staggered, nearly fell to the cement. “And how are you gonna help her?” He demanded. “Offer to be her snack?”
A muscle flexed along Tony’s jaw. “She’s not like that. She wasn’t crazy, she was just…Dee.” Sadness again.
Fucking shame.
Tony’s chin jerked up. “I don’t want her to wind up like Gomez or Grace. I don’t want—”
He stiffened. Okay, yeah, this was one of those moments in life that sucked. “Grace was working with the vamps. She lured the hunters out, got them to lower their guards.” Then served them right up to the vampires.
A woman he’d known for years. He’d laughed with her. Talked with her about her dumbass dog. Stolen her coffee more days than he could count.
And she’d set them up.
“What? No, man, she was a vic, same as the others, Grace wouldn’t—”
“We hacked into her hard drive today. Did interviews with family, friends, and we got her doctor to talk.” Patient confidentiality, his ass. That old rule stopped the moment the patient got zipped up in a body bag. “She was dying. Cancer. She had about six months left to live.”
“Christ.”
“You know humans,” Zane said softly, watching the cop carefully. “Once the clock starts running out, they get desperate. They’ll try anything.”
“Hell!” His throat worked. “Grace saw Dee.” He ran his hands over his face. “She was here. She saw Dee change, survive—live.”
Vampire. “Guess it was too much temptation for her. The bastards sent her an e-mail. Told her to bring a trade outside to them. The vamps promised her a new life.”
But just gave her death.
“They’re going after Dee. You know they won’t stop until she’s dead.”
No, they wouldn’t. “It’s time for you to step back, Tony. You’re not strong enough to handle the hell that’s coming.” Not with a Born Master playing in the game.
“I’m not leaving her alone.”
His brows shot up. “Who says she’s alone? Word I have is that Dee’s got a new lover, a vamp who risked the fire for her.” Interesting. In his experience, vamps really didn’t like to burn.
“I don’t trust that bastard.”
Neither did he. “You think he’s setting her up to die?” Grim. That was the Born’s name. Old as frigging dirt. And the older the vamps were, the stronger they were and the harder to kill.
Dee was a newbie. So easy for her to die.
“No,” Tony gritted out. “I think he’s setting her up to kill for him.”
Footsteps shuffled and a woman with short, red hair appeared, rounding the corner. She drew up when she saw them, her eyes widening.
The scent of smoke teased Zane’s nose.
She hurried past them, and he caught a whiff of…blood?
Hell of a combination.
“Zane. Shit man, forget about your dick right now, okay?”
He yanked his gaze off the woman’s ass and zeroed his stare back on Tony. “Go home. Leave Dee to me.”
But the cop’s head started shaking, hard. “I’m not abandoning her, I’m not just—”
“You want to be her prey?”
“What? No, she’s not like that!”
“Every vamp is ‘like that’ when they get hungry enough.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You want to find her? Go inside and talk to Pak. You know that guy always has info about this city.”