There was a long bar that stretched almost the full length of the room. I’d watched a few loners come and go, but for the last forty-five minutes, I had my eye on one guy in particular.
Though my powers were temporarily nulled, I could still pick out a vampire when I saw him. We had a certain way of moving and observing others that was unnatural. Predatory. That’s why this guy caught my attention.
Good looking with brown hair and wary eyes that glinted silver when the low light caught them at the right angle, he appeared to be in his twenties. As a vampire, he could be fifty or more with his youthful appearance. He was on his second whiskey since he sat down and kept texting on his phone. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to anyone else’s eyes. But to me, he was giving off definite vibes that had me targeting him and only him.
It was the way he watched the women in the bar. Focused. Assessing. As if he was running scenarios through his head. He was hunting.
This wasn’t unusual for a vampire. However, there were rules when acquiring a blood host. She or he had to be willing, so conversation was paramount. He’d made no attempt to speak to anyone, man or woman, since he’d entered the place.
The other trigger warning was that Barrel Proof wasn’t a vampire den, like Ruben’s Green Light. There were specific clubs where humans who were aware of the supernatural world and wanted to step inside our realm to engage with one of us as a blood host. Humans experienced a pleasurable high from the toxin injected by a vampire bite. They also experienced a certain touch of youthful beauty from the toxin, especially if they engaged as a blood host frequently.
But the humans here were oblivious to the vampire sitting at the bar, scouting for a victim. They weren’t aware of our world, which made my subject awfully suspicious.
The door swung open to a trill of feminine laughter. Four lively young women swayed in and found a four-top in the middle of the bar. The vampire’s gaze flashed silver as he focused intently on the newcomers. After about five minutes, he started texting furiously on his cell, his focus rarely leaving the women who bought a round of boilermakers.
I punched in a quick text to Ruben who was waiting in a dark SUV outside along with a crew of his men.
Me: We have a hunter. Could be one of our guys.
Ruben: Is he contacting anyone else?
Me: Yes. He may be rallying the troops.
Ruben: Good. Let him bring them in.
My heart pumped harder, the thrill of catching these pricks sending my adrenaline rushing fast and hard. I drained the last of the draft beer as the vampire became hyper alert.
I averted my gaze to my phone. Damn. He was definitely getting ready to take action. He had the look of a vampire taking close observation of his surroundings before he went for his target. Before he committed a crime.
I set my mug down, casually glancing at the door then at the vampire. His gaze was riveted on me. Intense and burning. He shot off a quick text, tossed a bill on the bar, then slipped off his stool and down a corridor toward the restrooms. Probably heading for a back exit.
“Fuck.”
I stood and marched after him, texting: He’s on the move. Back entrance. Now.
Once in the hallway, I ran through the back door, unable to trace without my powers. Ruben’s righthand man Gabriel held the vampire from behind, his arm locked on his throat. Before I could reach them, the captive pulled out his phone and crushed it into shards of splintered glass and metal in his hand.
I shook my head. “Wish you hadn’t done that.”
“Fuck you!”
Ruben appeared out of the night with two of his other men, Sal and Roland. The vampire captive bared his long, sharp canines, struggling in Gabriel’s grip.
“You can put those away,” I growled. “Nothing will help you now.”
He scanned me from the top down, scowling and heaving ferocious breaths. “Who the fuck are you?”
“You’ll find out, oh—” I glanced at my watch—“in about two minutes.”
His fierce expression was unflinching. That would change as soon as the null wore off and I had him all to myself.
Something caught my eye at his throat. It was a chain around his neck, but it looked strangely feminine. Reaching forward, I pulled the chain from his shirt, revealing a heart-shaped locket dangling from it.
“That’s mine!” he bellowed, trying to twist away from me.
Without even thinking, I tugged and broke it free from his throat as he tried to thrash around. Staring down at the delicate design, I said in a low, fierce tone, “This is most definitely not yours.”
“She gave it to me.”
The tiny locket weighed heavily in my palm, its psychic essence leaden in my hand.
“Who did?” As soon as the question left my lips, a jolt kicked my pulse faster with a lightning flick.
My magic poured back into me in a feverish flow. I clenched my fists on a groan of pleasure-pain as the rush of power returned, the chain dangling from one of them. Then it happened.
The memory echo still clinging to the necklace vibrated through my mind, whirling like a paper-thin photograph, coming to life. I stared down at the heart and flipped it over where her name was engraved in swirly script.
“Emma,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut as the memory echo danced through my mind.
It’s never clear when this happens. When my psychic ability merges with the Stygorn magic to bounce images through my brain, directed from a single object. Always a personal one to the owner. As if the object holds its own power from the love embedded inside of it. Memory echo was a rare gift only Stygorn possessed, but it’s also uncontrollable. Like the magic deems what’s worthy of me to see, for me to know.
I could see Emma Thomas, the most recent girl abducted. She lay huddled in a dirty blanket in an alley behind a garbage bin. She was unmoving. The memory blinked, flashing split-second images. The vampire standing in front of me was there leaning over her, whispering something to her as he took her necklace. He covered her in the blanket. More flashed images. A street name. Industrial buildings. Workers milling about who didn’t know the girl was there, barely breathing only yards away.
I opened my eyes, hauled back my fist, and punched the fuck out of the vampire still held by Gabriel. The captive’s head snapped to the side as he fell unconscious.
Before anyone could say a thing, I growled, “He’s dumped Emma Thomas’s body in the back alley in the warehouse district. She’s still alive. Barely.”
“Roland, get him back to The Green Light and into the vault,” snapped Ruben. “Gabriel, you and Sal come with us.”
Roland traced away with the captive vampire immediately.
Then Ruben turned to me. “Lead the way.”
“Let’s take the SUV.” There were other images still trying to pummel my mind, rippling from the heart-shaped locket. The day her mother gave her the necklace on her sixteenth birthday. The overwhelming love the woman had for her daughter. “We need to get her to the hospital and get word to her family that she’s safe as soon as possible.”
Gabriel jumped in the driver’s seat and I took the front passenger of the black SUV, Ruben and Sal in the backseat. We tore off toward the warehouse district, which was fairly empty at this time of night. Gabriel slowed when I started giving directions and stared intently out the window, looking for the same buildings from the vision.
“Turn here.” I followed the beacon burning inside me, pounding into me from the fragile necklace in my palm. “There! Down that alley.”
Gabriel jerked right. The SUV was too big to fit with the garbage bins, so he jerked it to a stop. I leaped from the vehicle and traced to the exact spot where I’d seen her in the vision, my pulse hammering with fear that we’d be too late.
But there she was, still unmoving beneath a dirty blanket that her captives had given her. Like that would be enough to keep her from dying out here all alone.
I knelt and lifted the blanket that partly covered her face, brown hair stuck to her sweaty face. Placing my palm to her neck, which was covered with bruised and healing puncture wounds from vampires, I felt the faint birdlike beat of her heart. Her skin was far too pale, her hands tucked in a ball under her chin like she was trying to get warm. It was spring and not cold at all, but her body felt otherwise. “She’s alive.”
“St. Catherine Memorial is closest,” snapped Ruben. “Let’s bring her there. Her family will be notified right away.”
I lifted her and carried her to the SUV, getting into the backseat. Ruben sidled in beside me.
“We’ll need to leave her anonymously,” said Ruben.
“Of course,” I agreed. We couldn’t be connected with the girl at all, not even as her rescuers. It would be too suspicious. “She was too frail for the kind of abuse her body underwent with these assholes.”
“Yes. Perhaps that’s why they dumped her. That only makes me hopeful they’re intention isn’t to kill these women at all.”
“I’ll find out once I get inside that fucker’s head,” I growled.
“We need to tend to her first,” said Ruben. “Though I agree it’s best we get her to the hospital and in the care and safety of the authorities and her family, she’ll need a Conduit’s healing.”
I stared down at the still unconscious girl, knowing the paleness of her skin indicated they’d drained her too much. The fury at what had been done to her by my own kind burned through my veins.
“Isadora,” I whispered.
Gabriel pulled up to the back of the hospital. Without a word, I enveloped my body with glamour and traced through the emergency entrance where an ambulance was parked. Humans might see a shimmer or a blur but I’d be gone before they could blink. I set her right by the closed back door, placing the broken necklace in her palm. Then I punched the button on the wall that requested entry into the backdoor and traced back to the vehicle.
When I got in, Ruben was on his cell. “Yes. Plenty of time for you to finish and close the kitchen,” he was telling someone. “It’ll take a few hours for the buzz of her being found to settle down anyway. We’ll get Isadora and go after visiting hours end.”