“I tell you what . . .” He drew his katanas and gave them a twirl. “Do you know how to use these?”

“Of course.” Her pragmatic response, utterly devoid of boasts, convinced him she spoke the truth. Richart’s Second crowed about his skills all the time, but Bastien had yet to see the boy win a single sparring match.

“Then I’ll trade you these for those.”

Melanie eyed his weapons. “I’d rather have the daggers.”

Smiling, Bastien returned the katanas to their sheaths and drew a dagger from the loops sewn into the lining of his coat.

Melanie offered him the auto-injectors with a sly smile. “You work fast.”

His pulse picked up.

When he didn’t respond, she motioned to the forest. “Already planning to recruit?”

He shrugged and studied the auto-injectors. Melanie was just too irresistible at the moment. “No point in waiting, really. How do these work?”

“Remove the red cap, press the tip against their skin, and hold it for three seconds.”

Bastien removed all of the red caps. “Three seconds is a long time.”

He could cross a football field from end zone to end zone in three seconds.

“I know. But usually auto-injectors take ten seconds to deliver a full dose. I cut it down as much as I could.”

He nodded and handed her another dagger. Then another. And another.

Each one she tucked into a different pocket.

The vampires were close enough to catch Bastien and Melanie’s conversation now.

He caught Melanie’s attention, touched his ear, then motioned to the forest on the east side of the clearing.

“It was the vampire king’s fault,” he said, beginning his performance. “He should never have believed the lies.”

She nodded. “He’d be alive today if he hadn’t. He and his army.”

The vampires stopped moving. Their voices hushed.

“It’s the old sleight-of-hand trick,” he went on. “Keep the vampires’ attention focused on the immortals—”

“And they’ll never see the new enemy coming,” Melanie finished, her soft, warm voice filled with regret.

“Vampires as a whole will be as easily extinguished as the vampire king and his army. Immortals, too.”

A nearly silent conversation began among their audience.

“Most vampires think the Immortal Guardians quelled the king’s uprising.”

“Some know the truth. But not enough. The immortals never would have achieved victory if so many of the vampire king’s followers had not already been destroyed,” Bastien lied.

“Well, now that vampires no longer have a leader, I don’t know how to warn them.”

Foliage rustled as the vampires put on a burst of speed and raced for the clearing.

Bastien moved to stand in front of Melanie, then cursed when she took two steps to the side and frowned up at him.

Reddish leaves already loosened by the cool weather burst from the bushes on the east side of the clearing and tumbled to the ground like candy from a piñata.

Dirt rose and fell in a cloud as the vampires skidded to a halt and faced them, all in a line, hands at their sides as if they were gunslingers preparing for a showdown.

Rather slovenly gunslingers.

Sans guns.

The vamps ranged in size from Melanie’s height—roughly five foot five—to nearly Bastien’s height of six feet and possessed the standard rangy, never-lifted-a-weight-in-their-lives build undisguised by baggy jeans. The blond wore a leather jacket he had probably filched from one of his victims. His auburn-haired friend wore a Carolina Panthers sweatshirt. The third vamp, whose short, raven hair was slicked back with what looked like an entire can of Murray’s Pomade, wore all black. Black pleather pants. Black dress shirt. Black pleather tie. Black belt. Shiny black loafers. Bastien couldn’t decide exactly what look the vamp had been going for, but he’d missed it whatever it was.

The other two vamps, who Bastien surmised had not been vamps for very long, wore matching Tar Heels sweatshirts.

Three of the vamps, the ones whose eyes were already glowing and whose fangs were exposed, were splattered with blood. The other two weren’t.

“Who the hell are you?” the blood-speckled blond in the leather jacket demanded.

“Yeah,” the vamp with auburn hair seconded. “What are you doing here?”

Bastien made a show of looking around. “If I’m not mistaken—and I’m not—this isn’t your property, so I have every right to be here.”

“Answer the question, asshole,” the blond said and took what Bastien assumed was supposed to be a menacing step forward.

“I’m here for the same reason you are. This place means something to me.” He let his fangs descend.

“He’s a vampire like us,” one of the Tar Heel vamps murmured.

“I don’t know,” the other muttered. “The woman is human. Doesn’t one of the Immortal Guardians have a female Second?”

The vamps all tensed.

“Are you Roland?” the blond demanded.

Bastien sighed and looked at Melanie. “Why do so many vampires think Roland is the only man infected with the virus who has a human consort?”

“Consort?” she repeated with an intriguing amount of interest. “Am I your consort then?”

“Don’t tempt me.” Seriously. The mere suggestion sent erotic images writhing through his brain and he needed to keep his head clear at the moment.

Later though . . .

No. Not even later. Melanie was off-limits.

“What’s a consort?” the Murray’s man asked.

Bastien turned back to the vamps. “Why are you here?”

The blond raised his chin. “I lived here once. I was one of Bastien’s soldiers.”

“No, you weren’t.” Bastien had never seen the little snot before.

“Was, too,” he retorted in a petulant singsong. “I wasn’t a grunt either. I was his second in command.”

“No, you weren’t,” Bastien repeated.

“How the hell do you know?” The vamp blurted, his face broadcasting his frustration.

“Because I’m Bastien, dumbass.”

Melanie sighed loudly and sent Bastien a look that said, Really? This is how you try to gain their cooperation?

Inwardly, Bastien shrugged. He’d tried. But he had always had a low threshold for bullshit. Particularly when that bullshit was doled out with a great big steaming pile of arrogance.

The blond shot forward in a blur, but stopped short before the others could do more than tense to follow. His expression stunned, he stared down at the dagger sticking out of his chest.

The dagger Melanie had thrown.

Bastien turned to Melanie. “And this would be your method of forging an alliance?”

She grimaced. “Sorry. Instinct.”

Once more fighting the urge to laugh—the two of them were really botching this—Bastien leaped forward.

While Melanie cursed herself for reacting too quickly, Bastien sped forward and plowed into the blond like an NFL linebacker. Without slowing, he caught the Panthers fan, too, and took them both down. The three slammed to the ground, dirt and winter brown foliage spraying up from the small crater they formed. Bastien reared back and hit the two vamps with the auto-injectors just as the other three vampires shot forward.

Melanie threw two daggers. One hit the vampire with the slicked back hair in the chest. The other hit one of the Tar Heels in the biceps. Both jerked to a halt and reached up to yank the blades out, giving Bastien enough time to deliver the full doses to the vampires he straddled.

The other Tar Heel kept going, streaking past Bastien and the others toward Melanie.

Fear sliced through her. She hurled another dagger, but the vamp dodged it, letting it fly past and land in the neck of the vamp with the slicked-back hair.

Down to her last two daggers, Melanie began to walk backward as she swung the blades in front of her. Mortals couldn’t combat a vampire’s strength. Nor could they match a vampire’s speed. The best chance they had was to try to anticipate where the vampire would strike and swing to deflect the blow long before the vamp actually made it. Melanie had always been good at guessing the next move. And vampires did tend to underestimate any mortals who challenged them, toying with them first before they attacked in earnest.

At the last minute, Melanie dropped to the ground. A breeze combed through her hair as the vampire sailed overhead.

Heart pounding, she jumped to her feet and faced the vampire as he hit the ground and spun around.

His face mottled with anger. His hands closed into fists. His blue eyes began to glow as brightly as the moon above them. Lips curling into a sneer, he drew a butterfly knife from his back pocket, fanned it open with a flourish, and gripped the handles.

Melanie balanced her weight lightly on the balls of her feet, gripped her daggers, and waited.

The vampire blurred.

Swiveling to the side, Melanie swung both blades and stepped back.

A sharp pain stung her thigh. Again raising her weapons, she watched the vampire halt and stare down at the two long rips in his sweatshirt. One tore the material open from the middle of his chest to his hip. The other opened his side and lower back. The edges of both swiftly turned crimson, the stain spreading beneath each opening.

Jaw clenching, he charged forward.

Melanie again dropped to the ground. This time the vampire tripped on her, his foot lodging painfully in her ribs, then flew several yards to land in an ignominious heap.

Not too bright, this one.

Melanie rose and fought the urge to clutch her sore ribs. Another lesson she had learned when training was to never tip off her opponents to a weakness. Show them an injury and they would exploit it.

Rustles and thumps sounded behind her. She wanted desperately to peek and see how Bastien was faring, but didn’t dare take her eyes from the vampire stumbling to his feet and facing her. Dirt clung to the wet ruby patches on his clothes. His hair stood up on one side.