“Don’t you mean we’re going in?”

“No.” When I gave him a dirty look, Lucas sighed. “Listen, we’re both too young to be in a bar legally. But I’m twenty and can pass for older. You’re seventeen—”

“Only for two more weeks!”

“—and you look seventeen. If I go in, chances are nobody’s going to throw me out. If you go in, it’s fifty-fifty at best that the bartender’s going to let us stay. Besides, dressed like that”—Lucas gave my blue sundress an appraising glance that made a slow smile spread across my face—“you’d definitely draw too much attention.”

“Well. When you put it that way.”

Lucas kissed me softly, and I rested my hands against his chest. I liked feeling the rise and fall of his breath. He murmured, “Get yourself something to eat, okay? We ran out of Ranulf’s stash a couple days ago. You’ve got to be starving.”

I hadn’t even noticed that I’d gone without blood. “I’ve had a few things,” I lied. “Don’t worry.”

He gave me an odd look, and I thought that I’d betrayed my concern. But Lucas kissed my forehead and headed toward the bar without another word.

You know, I really should eat. I began looking around for any sign of life. Probably it didn’t matter that I hadn’t wanted blood. Humans lost their appetite when they were sick, after all. Probably I had a touch of the flu or something, and instead of having human symptoms, I had vampire symptoms. I should make sure I had plenty of blood so I could get well.

Alleyways are good places to prowl for food, both for vermin and the creatures who hunt them. Within a couple of minutes, I heard some scurrying behind a garbage pail. I wrinkled my nose from the odor as I darted behind the can and grabbed—a rat, a small one, twisting in my grasp. It smelled no better than its surroundings, and I didn’t like the thought of where it had been.

This never bothered you before, I told myself. Remember the pigeons in New York? Flying rats, basically. Before, my craving for blood had driven me past the gross-out factor. Without any appetite, this was a lot harder to do.

As the rat squirmed, I said, “Sorry about this.” Then, before I could chicken out, I bit down, hard.

The blood flowed into my mouth, but the taste was—flat. Empty. Like a bad imitation of the real thing. I forced myself to take all four swallows the rat offered, but it did nothing for me. In fact, it tasted sort of disgusting. I recalled the one time Lucas had tasted blood, and the face he’d made as he spit it out. Finally I knew how he felt.

I tossed the rat’s corpse into the garbage can and hurriedly fished some mints out of my bag. The last thing I wanted was rat breath.

Yet the mints seemed flavorless, too. Maybe I hadn’t really noticed, because Lucas and I had mostly eaten bland microwaved food these days, but human food didn’t taste right either.

What’s wrong with me?

“What’s wrong with you?”

I jerked back to attention. The voice I’d heard—a woman’s voice—came from perhaps a block over. With my vampire hearing, every word was as clear as if I stood only a few feet away.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” said a man’s silky voice. “Nothing’s wrong with you either, so far as I can smell.”

“I don’t smell bad,” she retorted. “And it’s—your teeth—”

“What, you’re not going to be shallow, are you? Judge on appearances?”

I grabbed a stake from my purse and hurried toward the voices. Hopefully Lucas was also on this guy’s trail; if not, I wasn’t going to have any chance to reach him. My thong sandals slapped against the pavement, and I wished that I’d had the sense to choose something quieter and more practical for my only pair of shoes. But I also suspected the vampire was distracted.

When I reached the corner, I stopped and glanced around. They were silhouetted sharply against a nearby streetlight. Dusk had only just turned into night. The vampire was short but stocky and powerful, and the woman was tiny, hardly up to his shoulder.

“You’re making me nervous,” she said, trying to make it sound like she was flirting, though I could tell she meant it. She didn’t want to admit how scared she was. That was the number-one thing vampires used to their advantage—people’s refusal to believe that the worst-case scenario could really be happening to them.

The vampire leaned closer to her, his arms on either side, almost pinning her to the brick wall of the nearby building. “I’m trying to make you excited. Get that pulse rate going.”

“Yeah?” She smiled feebly.

“Oh, yeah.”

I’d had enough. Although I had no illusions about being able to scare the guy, I thought I could surprise him. That might do the trick.

Quickly I held the stake up in a fighting position, spun around the corner and said, “Back off.”

He glanced at me—and smirked. So much for the element of surprise. “Or what, little girl?”

“Or I’ll paralyze you with this. After that, you’ll be out of luck.”

The vampire’s eyes widened slightly; because I’d accurately described what staking did to a vampire, he’d realized I knew what I was talking about. That was the general idea. But it wasn’t nearly as intimidating as I’d hoped. “You might try.”

“Excuse me,” the woman said, “but do you two know each other?”

“We’re about to get real well acquainted.” The vampire took his arms from around the woman, and she wisely took off running. Her footsteps clattered against the sidewalk into the distance. He swaggered toward me. Though he was a short guy, his shadow from the streetlamp was tall and thin, stretching over me.

Lucas, I thought, this would be a really good time to step outside the bar and check on me.

The vampire stopped. “You don’t smell human.”

I raised an eyebrow. Finally I had his attention. Every other vampire I’d ever met was impressed by the fact that I was a born vampire, a rarity.

This one simply shrugged. “Hey. Blood is blood. Who cares where it comes from?”

Oh, crap.

Then a voice rang out, “You’re gonna care when it comes from you.”

“Lucas!” I cried.

The moment I saw him at the other end of the alley, Lucas started running straight for the vampire. I was forgotten. The vampire turned and sprang at Lucas, who dodged him and slammed his joined fists into the vampire’s back, sending him sprawling.

Well, if the guys had forgotten me, that didn’t mean I had to forget them. I grabbed a broken brick from the alleyway and threw it at the vampire as hard as I could. My aim had improved, thanks to my training with Black Cross; the brick caught him square in the gut. He turned to me, eyes reflecting eerily in the streetlamp, just like a cat’s.

“Get out,” I pleaded. “Get out of town for good. That way we don’t have to kill you.”

The vampire snarled, “What makes you think you could?”

Lucas tackled him, and they fell to the pavement. Those were bad odds for Lucas; short-range fighting always worked to a vampire’s advantage, because a vampire’s best weapons were his fangs. I ran forward, determined to help.

“You’re stronger”—the vampire gasped—“than a human.”

Lucas said, “I’m human enough.”

The vampire grinned at me, a smile that had nothing to do with the desperate situation he was in and was therefore even scarier. “I heard somebody was looking for one of our babies,” he crooned to Lucas. “One of the powerful ones in my tribe. Lady named Charity. Heard of her?”

Charity’s tribe. A jolt of panic shivered through me.

“Yeah, I heard of Charity. In fact, I staked her,” Lucas said as he tried to twist the vampire’s hand around his back. He left out the part where Charity got away and was still after us. “Think I can’t stake you, too? You’re about to learn different.” Yet Lucas couldn’t gain the advantage. They were too evenly matched. He wasn’t even going to have a chance to go for his stakes. The vampire could turn the tables on him at any second.

That meant it was up to me.

Can I really do this? Can I actually stake another vampire? It seemed so impossible, so savage. But if that was the only way to save Lucas, I would have to find the courage.

My hand shook as I came closer to them. Sweat had slicked my palm and made my grasp on the stake more tenuous. If I could just get a clear mark, a way to strike the blow—

Fear and nervousness added to my earlier nausea, and the world tilted strangely. I didn’t pass out, but I stumbled and had to brace myself against the wall to keep from falling. The stake clattered down; I couldn’t keep my grip.

“Bianca?” Lucas’s eyes went wide with fear.

The vampire seized the opportunity and pushed Lucas away, so that he fell. Horrified, I lurched toward them; if the vampire was about to attack Lucas again, I’d find the strength to pull him away no matter what. But the vampire was smarter than that; he ran, leaving us alone in the alley.

Lucas crawled to my side. I was on my hands and knees, down there in the garbage, and all of it stank so badly I thought I might vomit. My head felt too heavy for me to lift. The ends of my hair trailed into a puddle of some liquid I really didn’t want to identify. “I’m okay,” I said weakly.

“Like hell you are.” Lucas pulled me toward him, so that I could lean against his shoulder. We were on our knees beneath the streetlamp. My heart seemed to flutter in my chest, like a trapped bird, scrabbling to free itself. “Bianca, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” The harsh light of the streetlamp had turned everything into shades of gray, like we were in a black-and-white movie. “Do you think—do you think the vampire will leave the city?”

“Don’t worry about that right now. I’m going to take care of you.”

Lucas folded me against his chest. A cool spatter of rain on my cheek, then another on my calf, told me a summer storm had come. Neither of us moved as the rain quickened, wetting us both and plastering my hair to my head. It didn’t seem to matter to Lucas, and as for me—

I didn’t have the strength to move.

Chapter Sixteen

LUCAS FLUFFED THE PILLOWS BEHIND MY HEAD and drew the covers over me. “You sure you’re okay?” he said for about the eightieth time in the past two hours.

“I need to rest. That’s all.” I wanted him to stop worrying; he’d been half crazy with concern the whole way home, cradling me in his arms and stroking my hair as we took the bumpy bus ride back through the rain. Now the storm raged outside, rattling the wine bottles with thunder. “That vampire—he knows Charity. He’s going to tell her about us.”

“That’s why we’re never going on patrol in this city again.” He half turned as a lightning bolt crashed down nearby, and I could imagine him counting silently: one Mississippi. The storm was close.

I put one hand to my forehead; either it was warm or my hand was cold. My hair was still damp, which probably wouldn’t help.

“Did you not eat enough today?” He started rubbing my hands between his, trying to warm them up. It was like he couldn’t rest, couldn’t even think straight, until he’d fixed whatever was wrong. “Or—oh, my God.”

Lucas’s face went as pale as a sheet. I knew exactly what he was thinking, and it was so incredibly obvious that I had to laugh despite everything. “I’m not having a baby.”

“Are you positive?” When I nodded, he sighed in relief.

“Well, that’s something, anyway.”

I didn’t have the strength to admit to myself that this might be something serious, much less to admit it to Lucas. “I’ll be fine after I get some sleep. Wait and see.”